‘The boat was slammed over and water poured in'

Randall Reeves leaves the storm jib in its bag while braving the Southern Ocean to prove that speed is safety in heavy weather

- Randall Reeves

The first major blow of my first Figure 8 Voyage attempt – a solo circumnavigation of both the American and Antarctic continents in one season – stated the problem well enough, but I missed the clues.

It was December 17, 2017. My 45ft heavy displacement expedition sloop Moli (Mo) and I were 49 days out of San Francisco, crossing 52º south and on final approach to Cape Horn, when we were overtaken by an intense low packing steady winds to 50 knots and gusts to 70. During the later stages of this gale, Mo was pushing on under storm jib when a knockdown gushed just enough water through the companionway hatch and into the pilothouse to find and short-out the autopilot junction box.

Though disappointing, this was not particularly worrying as, at sea, the autopilot is relegated to the role of a backup device. Three days later, at 56º south and 400 miles west of the Great Cape, a non-serviceable, welded part on the windvane failed in a fresh northwesterly. It took six long and cold days of 12- to 18-hour tricks at the tiller to make Bahia Cook, the sheltered waters of Chile’s Beagle Channel and then on to Ushuaia, Argentina for repairs.

Once back on the Figure 8 Voyage route for the Cape of Good Hope and several damage-free gales later, I had begun to feel a certain ease with what the south could dish up.

I knew, I thought, what to expect and how to handle the boat as winds and seas increased and rotated slowly on their circuit from northwest to west to southwest. My comfort, as I would find, was in fact misplaced.