Solo yachtswoman Dee Caffari,32, who has rounded Cape Horn, as she continues her bid to become the first woman to sail the wrong way around the world, recently overcame problems with her autopilot which had threatened to halt the challenge.

 
Dee Caffari’s voyage, The ‘Aviva Challenge’, started on November 20 and she has already spent six weeks alone on the oceans. Her voyage has not been without incident; she has fought a tropical cyclone, traversed the erratic weather conditions of the doldrums and handled faults with her equipment that nearly stopped the project in the 7800 miles since leaving Portsmouth, UK.

Before her departure, Dee identified the perils of the Southern Ocean as the key part of her voyage and she can expect to reach the extreme limits of her physical and psychological tolerance before she returns to the relative comfort of the South Atlantic. How does Dee handle her 72 ft boat alone? Read James Jermain’s report in the February issue of Yachting Monthly to find out.