I came across a collection of photographs by Robert Capa.
The one above taken in France in 1939 is captioned: Former member of the Barcelona Philharmonic at a concentration camp for Spanish refugees.
Here is probably his most famous image.
The photos cover a little over twenty years from the 1930s until Capa’s death at age forty when he stepped on a land mine during the French Indochina War.
Robert Capa was known mostly as a war photographer. There are powerful images of the Spanish Civil War, Japan’s invasion of China, WWII, Indochina. But you will also find Trotsky giving a speech in Denmark in 1932 and various artists and celebrities: Picasso, Matisse, Steinbeck, Hemingway, Gary Cooper, Bogart.
The images are best seen by clicking on ‘view image only’.
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The passage did not end at Cape Horn. It would be three more months before I climbed up the pilings of Auckland’s King’s Wharf and stepped onto land.
So much of life is subjective and ambiguous. Rounding a cape is not. It is simple and direct. You either do it or you don’t. Forty years ago today no one else in the world knew that I had rounded Cape Horn; but I knew and that made all the difference.
If you read yesterday’s entry you know that I ate a can of beef stew for dinner and I did not even have a sip of brandy to celebrate. I had yet to discover Laphroaig.
Last evening Carol and I shared a bottle of good wine with a wonderful salmon and grilled vegetable pasta she made. Carol is a great cook when she has time. And of course I poured some Laphroaig into a crystal glass.
A friend wrote wondering if I have been reliving this experience to prepare myself for attempting to round Cape Horn from the east in GANNET or to prove that once is enough. He had forgotten that I passed Cape Horn a second time, although not solo.
I do worry about the cold. Even in what has so far been a mild winter, my shoulder bothers me when the temperature drops.
But if you were to open iNavX on the iPad mini I use as a chartplotter you would find a waypoint off Horn Island. The bearing from where I sit is 169º. The distance 5,972 nautical miles.
