This is the story of college-dropout John Kretschmer's quixotic voyage to retrace the route of the clipper ships, from New York to San Francisco by way of Cape Horn. This "doubling the Horn", as it was called, was a formidable challenge to ships exceeding two hundred feet in length, as they routinely battled headwinds of fifty knots and mountainous seas. Kretschmer and crew took on the Horn in a 32-foot sloop. This is his chronicle of that voyage.