Friday – February 20, 2009
There is nothing to see but the ocean. We are a day and a half away from South Georgia. There are no islands out here, and we haven’t seen whales or albatrosses either. The seas are calmer than yesterday, but it is pretty boring. South Georgia will be interesting. I think we have gained about 12 hours to the projected schedule, so I hope we spend the extra time at South Georgia (4 to 4 ½ days), since once we leave South Georgia, we are at sea for 8 of the last 10 days of this voyage.
We have received a quite extensive handout of what to expect upon reaching South Georgia. The King penguins are the highlight with upwards of 500,000 breeding pairs on the island. Fur seals are even more numerous with an estimated population of 3,5000,000. Wandering albatrosses are also numerous here, with 4,000 annually breeding pairs, half of whom are found on Bird Island which is situated at the northwestern edge of South Georgia. The island is the breeding place for millions of seabirds.
Saturday – February 21, 2009
Being on a ship with nothing to see but water and more water in every direction for hours on end is a little nerve-racking. It just goes on and on, and how anyone survived in a wooden sailing ship without going nuts is beyond me. I guess you really have to like being on the water, with all everything that means. I’m proud to be a landlubber, and the time spent getting to Cape Town after South Georgia will attest to that I’m sure.
The good news is that I’m either ‘getting my sea legs’ and/or the patch and Sea-band are working.
South Georgia is a very isolated land. The powers to be are so concerned about introducing foreign animal or plant life to the island, that there is a whole list of things not to do. We had to vacuum our backpacks and fanny packs to insure that nothing on them would take on the land. They have learned from mistakes in the past – there is a reindeer herd on the island (and that’s not native).
We also have been taking other precautions throughout the voyage. Getting into and out of the zodiacs which take us to land, we have to scrub our boots and also step into some kind of solution that sterilizes the boots. There is also a procedure when leaving the ship that insures that no one is left behind when it is time to move on. Each passenger has a plastic card which gets him/her into his/her cabin. They also took a picture of everyone when we boarded the ship. So when we leave the ship, we scan the plastic card which then shows them a picture of who is leaving, and when we return doing the same thing it shows that we are back. We haven’t lost a passenger yet.
We arrived at South Georgia late today at the southern tip of the hundred mile long island running north to south. All our landings over the next 4 days will be on the east side of the island. Tonight we had a short visit to a cove where we saw King penguins, baby fur seals (who are really quite aggressive for being so small), and Macaroni penguins (they have orange feathers on their head). Tomorrow we should see one of the gigantic colonies of Kings.