Genoa – “Fifty meters”, says the captain of the vessel Giuseppe Lai, commander of the Amerigo Vespucci ship. The radar glare illuminates his face. The officer looks at the screen and fixes the ship's position in his memory: latitude 56° 53' 7' South, 67° 16' 4” West.
It's 4.35 Zulu (the reference time zone, also GMT; 6.35 Italian time) when the Amerigo Vespucci ship reaches Cape Horn in the dark of the southern night. At the foot of the world it's raining, it's cold and the wind on deck cuts your face, the gusts of 25 knots are blades and there is the inevitable wave that imposes itself on the balance, even if the sea is more forgiving than nine meters of height of the previous day.
The captain of the sailing ship with the stars holds his breath, he pauses for a couple of seconds and then opens up to his crew, bringing his lips close to the intercom microphone. The voice breaks the silence with a tone tinged with emotion. “We started with the aim of trying to make the southern passage of the South American continent. We whispered that name, those two words with superstition. We never talked about it. Now those two words are history. A story by ship Amerigo Vespucci: Cape Horn! Ship Amerigo Vespucci has passed Cape Horn! I'm proud of you”.
He barely has time to finish speaking, that the “hip-hip-hurrahs” begin, fueled by the joy and also by the release of tension, of the men and women of the 'Vespucci'. “Irrepressible crew enthusiasm”, Lai wrote in the official dispatch addressed to the various commands and the General Staff.
And in which he will also communicate that the passage was made from West to East with the ship sailed with the foremast, the fixed and flying parakeet, the fixed and flying cage. The speed, with the help of the engine, was 10 knots. These are moments that count in the life of a sailor. Cape Horn is a legendary, feared passage, a bogeyman and at the same time a goal.
Here, where the two great oceans collide in an incessant duel, according to Francisco Coloane, who told it in his books, the Devil remained chained to the bottom, and this is why the sea is perpetually stormy.
For vessel Vespucci, which passed unscathed, was a milestone, perhaps the pinnacle of his world tour, which began last July 1st from Genoa and which will arrive in La Spezia in February 2025. Never before in Horn, in its 93 years of history of the sailing ship. And never before Giuseppe Lai, Sardinian from Ozieri, the 124 other commanders.
Not by chance, Defense Minister Guido Crosetto spoke of “pride” and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni posted her “fair wind”. The passage of the Navy training ship's Cape Horn was sought, but it was not safe.
For such a unit, which can hardly handle the wind, kept to perfection, but still from almost a century ago, is no joke. It is a maritime challenge, in terms of navigation, made even more convincing by the duties that a commander has towards the ship itself and its crew in terms of safety.
This explains why the “Vespucci”, coming from Buenos Aires, entered the Strait of Magellan and reached Punta Arenas, and then entered the Patagonian channels up to the Pacific and sailed again among these treacherous and cold waters close to the islands, regaining the Ocean and heading towards the Cape, precisely from West to East, with the wind almost astern and therefore in favor.
And then, celebrate the passage of Horn – too bad, in the dark – and sail up the Atlantic to the entrance of the Beagle Channel, to venture further among those remote islands on the way to the Pacific (the ship is expected on April 28th in Valparaiso, Chile) . This was not a joke, but a study of conditions and risks. A sailor's choice. And now, will Commander Lai wear the gold earring of the cap horniers? —
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