Hello everyone! It has been a very long time since our last Hawk update and in so very many ways the world has changed. We hope that none of you lost friends or family in the attacks on September 11th. We all lost something else, the value of which we won't know for some time to come.

Since our last update from Iceland, we've been without easy communications and mostly underway, sailing some 7,000 nautical miles from 60 degrees north to 35 degrees south. The passage from Iceland to the Canaries was almost uneventful. We snuck out of the Vestmann Islands on the southwest corner of Iceland in front of the first of the fall low pressure systems in the North Atlantic. We forereached for 24 hours several hundred miles off the coast of Ireland in 30 knot headwinds, and otherwise had a fast and easy 14.5 day passage straight south to the Canaries.

We spent a month in the Canaries - longer than we had anticipated but we decided to haul the boat to be sure everything was in decent shape after our grounding in Iceland and before the next 4,500+ miles to Uruguay. We were set to leave on September 11th when we turned on the radio while we were stowing the boat at 9:30 EST. Needless to say, we didn't go anywhere but spent the day listening to the radio, too stunned to do anything else. We both had much to occupy our thoughts when we did get underway the next day, and it was just as well we had a fast and easy five day, downwind passage to cover the 800 miles to the Cape Verdes.

The Cape Verdes proved a pleasant surprise. An increasing number of boats are spending time in these African islands to avoid the crowds in the Canaries, and a nascent yachting industry is developing. A German yachtie has created a marina of sorts at Mindelo on Sao Vicente off an old tugboat. We found the produce at the local market excellent, people friendly, and officials professional. We enjoyed our five day break there before beginning the 3,600 mile run to Uruguay and only wished we could have spent more time cruising these almost undiscovered islands.

The passage we just completed was the toughest we have ever had on Hawk, and rivals our first passage on Silk for being the toughest ever. It started with three nights in a row of 35-50 knot line squalls with thunder and lightning because the ITCZ was much further north than normal. We then had over 1,000 miles of light headwinds or no winds at all as we battled our way through the doldrums and SW monsoon to the equator. In the middle of that, for a variety of reasons we won't go into here, our engine got flooded with salt water and seized up and we spent twelve hours straight getting the water out and changing the oil. We only had two oil changes on board and needed at least three to save the engine - so we called a passing freighter and they dropped 30 liters of engine oil over the side with a smoke flare attached! Very exciting and very timely. We got the engine running again in time to use it more than we would have liked to get through the wide band of light and variable winds.

The passage ended with forty-eight hours of 40+ knots and twelve hours of hand steering through 20+ foot breaking waves as we closed with the continental shelf. We achieved a new speed record of 16.9 knots when Evans surfed down the face of a massive breaker with just the storm jib set. We were both more than ready to make landfall after 26 days and 3,800 miles sailed. But Hawk really proved herself in a wide variety of conditions, and we learned a tremendous amount about sailing her in storm conditions.

Punta del Este is a resort town serving the wealthy Argentineans. It boasts beautiful white sand beaches, palm trees, a quaint colonial old town and modern high rises. This is off season, so the town feels oversized for the inhabitants - two-thirds of the restaurants and hotels are closed and whenever we've eaten out we've been the only patrons. It feels a bit like Cape Cod in the off season, if Cape Cod had a smallish city on it. Though it's the equivalent of early April, it's warm and pleasant. No need for the diesel heater yet! We came here because North Sails recommended shipping our new suit of 3DL sails here instead of Argentina, and we're glad we did because it's a great place to recover from a difficult passage.

We have both been grateful for the time and money invested into Spanish. No one speaks English at all, and we've had quite the adventure dealing with mechanics (we wanted someone to go over the engine after the passage), autopilot repair agents, shippers, etc. But everyone is very patient and seems to enjoy the guessing game of what the crazy Americans are trying to say now.

We hope this finds all of you happy and healthy. We hope to be able to return to more regular Hawk updates now, but if you don't hear from us for a bit it's because we're still figuring out the communications systems down here!

Best wishes, Beth and Evans s/v Hawk