Giovanni Soldini’s Maserati/Gold Rush record attempt, Ryan Breymaier just became the first American in a long time to race around Cape Horn in both directions, and he sent in the latest news

We’re around the Cape Horn with Maserati and everyone is in high spirits to have passed this mythic point. This is the second time i’ve gotten to see this place though I never thought I’d be looking at it over my right shoulder. It’s also funny to be back here with Boris [Hermann, Ryan's co-skipper in the 2011 BWR], we are starting to collect some good memories of this part of the world he and I.
The journey so far has been pretty tough and this boat is not of the forgiving sort. We’ve seen all kinds of conditions since we left New York; first we had 4 days of heavy downwind, followed by some really wet reaching thru the trades. We had no doldrums to speak of and then more tradewinds. We were surprised to get a lot of light air upwind to finish with dead calm for 3 days right before the horn…. Not exactly what we were expecting…
What we did expect were the 25 knot westerlies we are currently beating into after getting a few miles past cape horn. There was definitely a squally zone with convergence along the coast right at the horn, where we had 35 knots and poor visibility. Now, we are going to spend a few more hours on starboard and more or less use Diego Ramirez as our turning mark to head north along the Chilean coast on port.
The latest routing has us 2100 miles from San Fran in 16 days which will be really good going. At the moment we are happy to have gotten around the horn 9 hours faster than the 110 foot catamaran Gitana 13 lthough we are well aware they stopped for a few days before the Horn to wait out the weather.
Roll on the slide northwards and lets get this puppy into the barn.
The boys on board are good, but there is already talk of what we are going to eat first, beer, women, etc. I guess being 30 miles from Puerto Williams in the Beagle channel and having Seb Audigane regale us with tales of the food and wine there are having the expected effect. Not much longer to wait; the return trip is always much shorter then the trip out in the first place.
I am really tired so its time to climb into my sleeping bag and be rocked gently to sleep by crashing upwind for the next 3 hours inside a carbon drum.
-Ryan