Wild Day at South Georgia Island
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| Silversea Explorer anchored at South Georgia Island |
First—Happy Thanksgiving.
We had a turkey dinner on board tonight with a couple of other Americans
plus a man from New Zealand and one from Ireland. Very enjoyable, but I miss cooking
Thanksgiving dinner for family and friends.
Sometime early yesterday morning, we
crossed the “Antarctic Convergence”, the area of the ocean that marks the end
of the South Atlantic and the beginning of the Southern Ocean. The crew takes the water temperature every fifteen
minutes and knows when we make that crossing because the water temperature drops about 10 degrees. The weather also changes dramatically, so we
went from sun and light winds to fog and heavy winds, with lots of big swells. I continue to be grateful for my seasickness
patches. Don is now surviving on Dramamine
quite happily.
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| Thousands of penguins on Salisbury Plain, South Georgia Island |
When we rounded the east end of
South Georgia Island early this morning, it was still relatively calm with winds
of 20 knots, and foggy. Our crew decided
to attempt landings on a beach called the Salisbury Plain, literally covered
with king penguins and both fur and elephant seals. Today, there were somewhere around 150,000
penguins and thousands of seals on the beach and up into the rock falls of the
mountains. An amazing sight.
The surf was OK when the first
groups landed (you can only have 100 people at any one time on South Georgia
and the Antarctic Peninsula, so we, being 120 people on board, went in 2 groups). By the time the first group returned to the
ship, the sea was getting pretty heavy and everyone was soaked as they got out
through the surf and hit large waves on their way back to the ship on the
Zodiacs.
When our turn came to leave the ship
in the Zodiacs, the conditions were marginal, which meant that big swells
battered the ship and we had to jump onto the Zodiacs between swells. The crew is incredible in their handling of
these very stable boats in high waves.
We landed on the beach, with some of the crew snagging our Zodiacs and
dragging us through the surf, about 4 feet high at that point. The crew members were in wet suits and soaked
and cold since the temperature was about freezing with, by then, a 35 knot wind
(the maximum for operations on shore).
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| Penguin injured by seal |
We wandered through the huge crowds
of penguins and seals, seeing thousands of incubating pairs, a number of
newborn baby seals, and some badly injured penguins who had narrowly escaped a
foraging seal that had snatched a chunk of their blubber. After about 45 minutes, it was clear that we
couldn’t return to the ship the way we had come, so we gathered all the
survival gear that always comes ashore and headed off over the beach and
tussock grass to a calmer landing site, about 1 ½ miles away in a small
cove. We loved the walk, but the male
seals were very unimpressed with us and growled, howled and charged us to get
us out of their territory.
Meanwhile, the ship moved from its
anchorage to the bay we were headed to, where we would have a better chance of
boarding the Zodiacs and the ship.
Finally, we accomplished both, thoroughly soaked, but so happy to have
had the opportunity to wander among these gorgeous animals.
As soon as we headed out to sea to
move to our next destination, the swells rose to about 27 feet, according to
the crew, who measure them constantly.
That meant that the ship was pitching and rolling to a remarkable
degree. We were eating lunch while the
plates, glasses, liquids and food slid from one of the table to the other and
often onto the floor. The waiters
wrapped saran around their serving stations to keep all the plates, glasses and
utensils from flying onto the floor. Back
in our cabin, there were waves crashing on our windows, and we’re on the 4th
deck. Quite exciting.
By late afternoon, we had moved to a
protected bay where one of South Georgia’s old whaling stations had been
located. The buildings are still there,
though in ruined state. This is where
Ernest Shackleton and his companions arrived after a horrific crossing of the
mountains in blizzard conditions, not knowing where they were or being able to
see where they were going. At one point,
Shackleton heard the whistle announcing lunch for the workers and headed in
that direction, down a precipitous waterfall and ice face into a flat valley
and on to the whaling station, from which he rescued his crew whom he’d left on Elephant Island.
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| Gail and Don at Shackleton's grave, South Georgia Island |
Tonight we ventured into the heavy
seas again, but are now anchored in a deep, narrow bay, where there used to be
a whaling station. It’s now an Antarctic
research station. We will visit it
tomorrow, hopefully, weather permitting, to visit Shackleton’s grave and a
monument his crew built in his honor.
Shackleton died here of a heart attack on one of his later trips to try
to reach the South Pole.
South Georgia Island is magnificent
with a 10,000 foot high ridge of mountains running its length. These are covered with snow and glaciers, so
a beautiful sight. In most places, they
run right into the deep ocean waters.
The only inhabitants now are researchers and fishery scientists who
monitor the health of the fisheries that surround this area in abundance.
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| Old whaling town of Grytvigen, where Shackleton is buried and the only occupied settlement on the island |
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