I guess when one comes this far south with their boat, there is a natural desire to view and go past Cabo de Hornos on one's own. For me, it wasn’t important as we had sailed past last year on our cruise to Antarctica. Ned and Rachel both were keen to give it a try so after a lot of arm twisting, I signed on and we all looked for a good weather time to make the attempt. We found three days, a little short but doable and got our zarpe (permit) for the trip. We set off to an anchorage 30 miles East spent the night and got up at first light for the 55 mile trip pretty much due south. The plan was to anchor about 10 miles away, get up the next morning, do the dash around and be back to that anchorage, spend the night and get back somehow the next day, a little more time than this particular weather window looked like it would allow. The sail down was one of our best, following winds and flat seas, always cold and damp. The Chilean Armada's presence down here is strong and they called us nearly every two hours to just check in. Nice to know that someone is watching. We arrived at the place where we were going to turn toward the anchorage and it was only 1 pm. Quickly recalculating, we thought we could do the Horn and get back to the anchorage by 6 or 7 pm. It is light until 10 pm so we headed into the open ocean. Isla Hornos came into view, the rain stopped and although the seas were probably around 6 feet we enjoyed viewing at close range this southern monument. Ned would have liked to get off and sign the book that is there, but our time was short, the wind was blowing and our dinghy is small so we opted for some nice photos and headed back to the anchorage. By the time, we arrived the wind was really blowing and the rain and hail was flying so we all agreed that we were glad to have done it when we did. Another beautiful sail north and we were back in the Beagle Channel by 5 pm the next day. Having checked this one off, we are ready to head off to Ushuaia, Argentina and prepare for our 1500 mile slog to Buenos Aires.