Solo Around Cape Horn tells the story of a pioneering English yachtsman's adventures in Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego in his elderly wooden ketch.
When Edward Allcard sailed south from the River Plate in 1966, he was heading into a territory which was almost entirely unknown to yachtsmen - but that was part of the attraction. Such trail-blazing adventures were nothing new for Allcard. In 1948 he had sailed alone from Gibraltar directly to New York. And two years later, on crossing back again, he had become the first yachtsman to sail solo both ways across the Atlantic.
Cruising in the high latitudes was a very much more challenging and dangerous business in the days before sailors had access to weather forecasts and modern electronics. Edward Allcard's yacht also lacked an efficient self-steering system, and so, as a single-hander, he often had to spend an entire day or night at the helm. Heavy weather challenged not only his own endurance but also that of his 55-year-old wooden craft.
There were times during the voyage to Cape Horn when the duo seemed to have met their match, and Allcard certainly came perilously close to losing his boat and his life.
Having survived the Horn - and having endured a winter in Tierra del Fuego - Edward Allcard sailed north through the Chilean Channels to Valparaiso.
The wild Patagonian scenery, his encounters with the fast-vanishing Yaghan indians, and his escapades foraging for food and firewood all lived up to Edward Allcard's expectations for this cruise - and thus it was that, some 40 years afterwards, he decided to share them with the world. Based on memory and his logbooks, Solo Around Cape Horn was finally finished in his 100th year, and it is expected to be ready for publication in this, the 50th anniversary of his voyage.
Allcard, Edward: - "Born in 1914, Edward Allcard was crossing oceans - and writing books about it - before Eric and Susan Hiscock ever set out from the British Isles, and although they are rightly deserving of fame as the first world-girdling cruising couple, Edward Allcard's exploits certainly surpass theirs both for duration and drama. Seldom could he ever claim, as Eric Hiscock almost invariably did, to have made "another uneventful passage". Instead, his stories are replete with accounts of gales and other excitements. In 1948, Allcard sailed alone from Gibraltar straight to New York. Two years later, on crossing back again, he became the first yachtsman to sail both ways single-handed across the Atlantic. Or at any rate, his passage from New York to the Azores was completed solo; but on setting out from the islands he found that he had a young and beautiful stowaway aboard...! In the Canaries in 1957, Edward Allcard met Peter Tangvald - then a novice, but soon to become well-known in the cruising fraternity. Both anxious to get to the West Indies as quickly as possible, the men challenged each other to a single-handed duel; and thus the first ever east-to-west solo transatlantic race was created. From this first encounter a strong friendship was formed and, many years later, when Tangvald was lost during the wreck of his boat, it was Edward Allcard and his wife who took Tangvald's teenage son into their home and into their hearts. In the interim, Edward Allcard continued his lone voyage around the world via Cape Horn; and eventually, in 1973 - some 16 years after starting out - he completed the expedition. By now married and with a young child, Allcard subsequently bought an old wooden ketch, which the family restored and then sailed across the Atlantic and throughout the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. In 2006, at the age of 92, Edward Allcard finally sold his last boat and moved to the Pyrenees. Now in his 102nd year, he continues to live in this mountain eyrie."
