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Sailing round Cape Horn is normally a both extremely difficult and dangerous task. In the so called normal weather conditions the wind force is 10 or more (30 m/sec, 55 kn/sec). The relatively narrow Drakes Strait, between South America and Antarctica raises the waves 40-50 feet. Rain or snow reduces the visibility to zero. Most of the few yet living Horn-rounders have actually not seen the Horn.

Cape Horn is a rocky island, two times one mile, at the bottom of the Patagonian archipelago on the most southern tip of South America. The picture was taken from the south on the deck of the 49 ft steelketch s/y Callas. She was crewed by three Swedes, one Finn, three Argentineans,  including the skipper Jorge Trabuchi, and one Chilean pilot. Callas had sailed from the most southern town in the world, Ushuaia in Argentina. She sailed first east in the Beagle Canal, of Darwin considered the most beautiful place in the world, surrounded by glaciers and snow-covered mountain peaks. Callas entered Chile at the navy base Puerto Williams on the island of Navarino. She turned south on the Atlantic, rounded the Horn and returned to Ushuaia. The voyage took seven days.

The weather was mainly normal - stormy, rainy and bitterly cold though it was in the middle of the summer in the Southern hemisphere - due to neighboring Antarctica. Twice Callas was violently knocked down by 'williwaws', most feared tornadoes that suddenly hit you with a black wall of solid water and wind.

But on arrival at Cape Horn in the afternoon of December 31, 1994, the New Year´s Eve, the wind and waves suddenly calmed, the clouds vanished and revealed the midsummer sun enlightening the deadly ugly Devil´s Tooth south of the Horn. The permanent screaming from the rigging silenced.

'It´s a miracle!' shouted skipper Trabuchi, nervously touching the image of the Horn-sailors saint, Stella Mares, at the steering wheel. It was felt unreal, almost spooky.

Due to the sudden extremely good weather conditions a sailing yacht was, via radio from the Chilean Navy, for the first time in twenty years allowed to anchor at Cape Horn, letting the crew ashore and stay over night. The crew dinghied ashore between strings of thick kelp. They were met by three young and very lonely Chilean soldiers who guarded the island in 30 days turns - and by Cape Horn´s only permanent resident - a sheepdog named Bovitt, living on a daily penguin.

The soldiers guided the crew on a grand tour of the island, visiting the old light house, the small Stella Mares-chapel, and the Albatrosmonument of surviving Horn-rounders. The second photograph is taken at the Chilean monument of the many drowned sailors. It shows from left Hannu Olkinuora from Finland, Arne Mårtensson, Björn Karlin and Hasse Olsson from Sweden. Then the visitors passports were stamped with the famous and highly desired penguinstamp. Earlier during 1994 Cape Horn had been visited by 20 persons.

The crew of Callas was invited to spend the New Year´s Eve in the soldiers tiny hut. Callas could contribute to the New Year-festivities with resources that are seldom found in the supply of remotely commanded soldiers, namely a lot of tasty wine and a first class chef (Señor Carlos). It became a fantastic party, dedicated to peaceful friendship among a multinational group of eleven men and one dog at one of the most deserted and dangerous places in the world - The World´s End, as it is called
by the locals.

>From natural reasons the crew woke up rather late on New Year´s Day finding it still sunny and calm. The Finn improved his recovery by jumping into the ice-cold water and swim! The South Americans regarded him, of course, as perfectly insane being the first human deliberately swimming at the Horn and surviving it. So, Callas rounded the Cape Horn, slowly drifting pass it, hardly beating the current, while its crew experienced emotions that continued to grow inside them long after returning to, what some people carelessly call civilization.