The climate down here is very harsh and only a very special breed of sailors venture to this part of the planet. 85% of the boats are made out of metal, with steel having the upper hand before aluminum. But the trend is favoring aluminum now. The rest of the 15% divides equally into fibreglass, wood and ferrocement. To our surprise, we noticed during our short stay at the Micalvi in Puerto Williams that two vessels were made out of ferrocement and both of good looking manufacturing. All the professional charter boats catering to Cape Horn roundings with glacier tours or even sailing to Antarctica 600 miles away, were of metal construction. Winds could reach hurricane strengths there and these boats get caught and survive.
Over drinks onboard DD, Roger, from the charter yacht "Australis" told us of his last trip to Antarctica with a film crew as guests and from which he had just returned. While anchored in the Antarctica, the wind increased to 120 knots and his main sail became unfurled during the night, causing the anchor to drag. The crew was unable to refurl the sail and was forced to cut it down quickly before the yacht would end up on shore. During this frenzy and while two crew members where cutting from both sides of the mast, one of his crew (a girl) had her left hand slashed while she was pressing onto the sail and cutting away with her right hand. Blood was pooring everywhere, sail cloth flapping like crazy in the wind and the charter guests all excited about the whole thing thinking it was a nice action, proceeding to film it all! In the meantime the keel cooling of the 180 hp Gardner diesel froze up, causing another big problem for the captain.
All these professional boats down here have huge reels with polyethylene ropes to tie up the boat to trees on shore when anchoring and they use them instead of dock lines. Pictures to follow!
The picture is of Australis on the dock. Her website is: http://cape-horn.net/australis.crew.html