An update from Sail-World.  Abby Sunderland is close to rounding Cape Horn, while malfunctioning autopilots may threaten her circumnavigation attempt.

Teen sailor Abby Sunderland to round Cape Horn Tuesday

16-year-old Californian sailor Abby Sunderland, following Jessica Watson in her attempt to be the youngest non-stop circumnavigator, is only a couple of days away from sailing around her first big milestone, Cape Horn.

Her father has flown to the most southerly city in the world, Ushuaia, on Argentina’s island of Tierra del Fuego to try to make contact with Abby as she passes the infamous Horn. To organise this he was helped by Jessica’s family, who did the same thing a couple of months ago, overflying Jessica in a chartered aircraft.

Already the cold and the damp are making their mark on the intrepid teen as she copes with ongoing autopilot problems. A recent night was spent hand steering in confused seas and freezing temperature, when she could get neither of her autopilots to function.

Abby was able to connect the screen of one autopilot to the controls of another, so for the moment, she has one complete and working system. The autopilot is critical to Abby as she does not have a wind steering device on board. The voyage would be thrown into jeopardy without a working autopilot system in these conditions