Graham Evans

Fyne Spirit - for their passage through the Straits of Magellan in their cat-rigged Freedom 39. Having travelled south for the previous 10,000 miles on Fyne Spirit, Graham and Anne entered the Magellan Straits in a westerly gale which kept them hove-to for 24 hours. With some luck they then passed through the two sets of narrows in a single tide with a rare easterly, following wind at 12 knots SMG. Then followed constant cold, westerly winds with non-stop rain together with a 2-knot east-flowing tide and a GPS position which was some- times out by three miles in a channel only two miles wide. It took four days to reach the western end of the Strait where it then took three attempts to get across the wide Paso del Mar: at the first attempt the weather was too bad, the second attempt ended after covering only 10 miles in a day when gusts hit 50 knots, the alternator brack- et broke and the heating failed. The third attempt saw them through when they finally turned north for the entrance to Canal Smyth and the start of the next 800 mile leg through the Patagonian Canals to Puerto Montt.