Record-breaking British yachtsman, Mike Golding, has become the only person to have raced three times round Cape Horn in both directions.

Golding, rounded the fearsome Cape Horn today at 02:05 GMT, becoming the only person to have raced around this infamous rock three times each way: west to east and east to west.

Lying in sixth place in the 2012-13 Vendée Globe, the solo, non-stop round the world race, this rounding marks the British skipper’s remarkable achievement of racing around the tip of South America for the sixth time.

Golding’s passage between the Pacific and the Atlantic today is his third time solo in a Vendée Globe, rounding west to east in 2001, 2005 and now 2013. And this time – which will probably be his last solo racing passage – the relief has been considerable.

After taking something of a beating in the east Pacific Ocean over recent days, with stormy gusts to 45 knots and very big and confused seas, Golding has had to use all his experience to manage his IMOCA Open 60 Gamesa in the boat-breaking conditions. The proliferation of ice, which has drifted north on to the race track, made this his most stressful rounding yet.

"I think there has probably been ice before, but we just did not know about it and went around blissfully unaware in years gone by. But now with the ice-tracking technology available to the race, we are all the more aware and it is much more stressful," Golding explained.

A former professional fireman, Golding cut his teeth on Sir Chay Blyth’s Global Challenge races, westabout against the prevailing winds and currents.

Competing in two editions, Golding skippered two crewed east to west passages of the hardest Cape of all. Golding first rounded 20 years ago during the 1992-1993 British Steel Challenge.

He rounded again when he set a new record in his solo east to west circumnavigation in 1993-1994 backed by Group 4. He returned again in 1996-1997 en route to winning the BT Global Challenge.

Now with his third Vendée Globe rounding solo, he extends his existing record.