And, behind me, is the southern ocean.

And Cape Horn, we passed, about 29 miles off this morning.

Going past Diego Ramirez Island.

Now we're heading north.

Typically a question is always how you get past Staten Island.

So we came up here and here is Land HO!

Its amazing.

This is going to be the Straits Lemaire.

Across from dead ahead here, across to there's Staten Island down there.

And there's a lot of current that comes through here, so I'm curious to see what's going to

happen.

We've looked up the tide charts.

Know that if a tide is rising, in here, then that means the current is going north.

So, we're a little early for it.

Its coming out now.

Its coming south.

But, so, Staten Island down there and this will cut off about 50 miles or so instead

of going east to go around Staten Island if we were going to do that.

Which we did in 2008-2009.

But I'm always a little leery of Straits Lemaire because of the current.

We shall see.

Alan Roura went through last night, after going close aboard to Cape Horn.

And about 2 or 3 reefs and the staysail, said he was a little bit worried about gusts coming

off these mountains right here.

Good, valid point.

We just actually went up to the 2nd reef, because we were poking along so slowly, with

just the 3 reefs, that we had all through the night.

Because we had strong winds.

But we'll see how it goes in here.

And its about 15 miles across, between the 2.

And its about 18 miles north and south.

And so when we get out on the other side, we should be in the lee of the continent,

which we haven't really been yet.

We've been in the lee of some of the islands around Cape Horn, just a little bit, but just

bizarre sea state.

Which is very steep waves, but not enough wind to propel them, I don't understand it,

but maybe there's a little bit of current coming out of Straits Lemaire, here that's

going into that wind and maybe creating some of that but, here that the situation, a nice

little albatross.

I don't know what type that is.

Species I guess, is the right word.

And just a little extra wildlife shot there, right at the end of the description of Straits Lemaire.

So, anyway, we'll fill you in how it goes.

There we have, that's the first land that we've seen since the 3rd night of this race.

And earlier today, we saw the first, well the first boat, other than Eric Bellion coming

by that day.

We saw a fishing boat this morning, its the first boat since November 20th, which was

a Brazilian warship, off, around, Salvador, so Brazil.

So its been a long time since we've seen much of anything to do with normal life on planet Earth.

So here we are, Straits Lemaire and we'll let you know how it goes.

Great American IV, off and clear.