A kindred spirit challenges Cape Horn
Ryan Finn successfully reaches San Francisco sailing a Pacific Proa
American sailor Ryan Finn has done it!
Ninety-three days after departing New York City, Ryan sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge to reach San Francisco after a long and difficult passage via Cape Horn.
His Jzerro is the smallest sailboat (at 36-feet LOA) to have completed the 14,000-nautical-mile passage from New York to San Francisco via Cape Horn and the first and only proa to have done so.
A lesser man would have given up.
In fact, a year ago, Ryan was forced to abort his initial record attempt. Less than 24 hours after departure from New York, Jzerro, his 36-foot proa, suffered damage and he was forced to put into the Chesapeake.
Undaunted, the New Orleans sailor, now aged 43, repaired and improved Jzerro, with the help of her designer and builder, Russell Brown, and set out again this January.
Ryan was forced to stop twice in port for repairs in Salvador, Brazil, and Mar del Plata, Argentina, and then take refuge from bad weather in an anchorage in Tierra de Fuego near Cape Horn, so he was not able better the singlehanded record of 81 days 5 hours held since 1989 by Philippe Monnet with the trimaran Elle et Vire.
But his accomplishment is truly amazing: smallest sailboat (at 36-feet LOA) to have completed the difficult 14,000-nautical-mile passage from New York to San Francisco via Cape Horn and the first and only proa to have done so.
Bravo, Ryan!
A word about proas: Proas are various types of multihulled outrigger sailboats of the Polynesian peoples. In its most common usage, the term proa refers to the Pacific proas which consist of two unequal-length parallel hulls. It is sailed so that one hull is kept to windward, and the other to leeward. It is double-ended, since it needs to "shunt" to reverse direction when tacking.
By the by, I believe my Cape Horn record of 76 days 23 hours 20 minutes set in 1989 still stands as the doublehanded mark. I sailed with one crew aboard my trimaran Great American.
The all-out record for the passage, which I held for five years, has been owned by French sailors on huge boats with seemingly unlimited budgets for several years now.
Ryan Finn and I are kindred spirits in that we both challenged the Cape Horn record self-sponsored—with limited budgets, his being much smaller than even mine.
Expect to hear from Ryan Finn in the future as he has a bigger boat for an even bigger challenge in mind.
"I came up with the idea of a non-stop solo passage from New York to San Francisco on a small proa to prove the concept of such a boat for a long, solo record breaking. The bigger project being a solo non-stop circumnavigation from East to West," wrote Ryan Finn. "I don't think there's an existing multihull that could survive the non-stop westbound record, but I think a proa could. While researching the route for this trip, I became obsessed and really haven't thought about anything else since."
Keep an eye on Ryan Finn on his Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/2oceans1rock
As fate would have it, Ryan almost crossed wakes down at the Horn with a 75-foot trimaran sailed by two Frenchman attempting to establish an East-West circumnavigation record, the same record that Ryan has in his sights, except he wants to tackle it singlehanded. The record for the fastest solo west-about non-stop circumnavigation against the prevailing winds and currents is held by Jean-Luc van den Heede of France. He sailed around in a 60-foot monohull in 122 days, only the fifth sailor to have completed such a circumnavigation.
The trimaran Use It Again arrived at the Horn a week before Jzerro, sought shelter from a savage storm in the Beagle Channel and ran aground, damaging the boat. Use It Again was being repaired in Ushuaia, Argentina, when Jzerro rounded the Horn. Use It Again eventually set sail for Tahiti to complete a circumnavigation in a leisurely fashion.
Follow Use It Again here: https://www.useitagain.earth/?lang=en
Read more about my own Cape Horn challenge and watch a documentary here: