Circumnavigating South Georgia – Part 2
The foggy, overcast conditions cleared on the third day out and a brief period of calm seas followed. As the sun set that night the relative calm slowly came unhinged with the winds rising through 40 knots to 50 knots and sea building to 20 feet and an occasional 30 footer. These were very short and steep waves, a rough ride as you might ever get. Dion is a master sailor and we crashed ahead to Shag Rocks that we passed through the next day. The Golden Fleece and Dion had been here so often we sailed between the rocky crags alive with South Georgia (Imperial) Shags and in spite of the constant wind the overwhelming smell of their centuries of habitation. Because the waters around the rocks are fairly shallow (about 1,045 feet) this allows the shags to find fish to support their colony. Dion said that there are often whales hanging around these rocks as well, but we did not see any. The winds had dropped to 20 knots with an ambient temperature of 32 degrees Fahrenheit and the seas had returned from wild and insane to sedate and just normal roughness. That evening we passed the fishery patrol vessel, "Pharos," that enforces fishing regulation around South Georgia [more about this activity and attempts to protect the South Georgia environment]. It is about 225 kilometers from Shag Rocks to South Georgia and by the following morning in calm seas and 10-knot winds we were approaching Willis Island, South Georgia. Of course the weather is radically changeable and the sky went from blue to overcast and we were engulfed in a snowstorm before landfall.
On this fourth day we received e-mail telling us the adventure cruise ship Expedition had hit something, probably ice, and was sinking. All 150 passengers and crew were in lifeboats and several ships, including the Chilean Navy, were headed towards a rescue. This is a first for any of the modern adventure cruise ships working Antarctica. We also hear of two sailboats similar to ours that left Stanley shortly after we did headed for South Georgia waters that broke a mast and swamped. Both capsizing and had to be towed back to Stanley. Dion knows both of these sailboats personally. Everyone was reported safe, but we are more appreciative of Dion and the Golden Fleece...the seamanship, seaworthiness and extensive experience.
The ride is the event of getting to anywhere in the Southern Ocean. Descriptions of on-board life, whether the Golden Fleece or the Kapitan Khelbnakov, in those crossings to the South Sandwich Islands or Antarctica is part of the daily routine, but for me not at all part of those places. On-board life is an attempt to make habitable, normal and tolerable a very challenging environment in which nothing can be taken for granted. For example, one of our favorite meals was "toasties-in-the-wheelhouse." A "toastie" is similar to a grilled ham and cheese made in a press rather than on a grill. The wheelhouse was the center of the daylight world so that we could all monitor sea life, birds, icebergs and the weather. Dion usually had a book and was reading while Dan stood watch. Standing watch in these waters was an absolute necessity and conducted 24 hours a day.
We sighted our first icebergs before reaching Shag Rocks. Sometimes we passed by individuals and at other times they were everywhere. Icebergs are descriptive and individualistic. They are full of colors. Some are deep and iridescent blue. The color can be a function of the age of the exposed face of such seaborne creations. For example, when an iceberg breaks off a glacier the new face absorbs most all other colors of the spectrum, except the blue that literally glows out of the iceberg. As the face of the ice ages, air bubbles are absorbed into the surfaces of the ice and white reflections make them appear the whitest, white in nature. The southern icebergs can be regularly gigantic. If one is 150 feet from waterline to top then there is about 850 feet below the surface. Such icebergs have been observed as topping 250 feet above the water. I have seen icebergs that were hundreds of miles long.
There are two kinds of icebergs: Northern and Southern. The arctic icebergs of the northern type are jagged peaks of irregularly shaped ice broken from land-based glaciers. They share the same buoyancy as their southern cousins--you see the same fifteen percent of it above water, but nonetheless these smaller northern types have sunk ships. The southern Antarctica-type icebergs are usually flat topped and described as tabular. They are calved from the massive glacial ice constantly extending out from mainland Antarctica. These glaciers can be up to 2 or 3 miles thick inland and several thousand feet thick as they extend out into the sea. And they literally flow into the sea, some move as fast as 5 or 6 feet a day. Tabular icebergs have no counterparts in the rest of the world. As they age they shrink and lose this noteworthy "tabularness." They roll over which produces fabulous and fantastic shapes. The Northern and Southern types never extend far out of their territories. Occasionally a tabular iceberg will be sighted as far north as 26 digress south latitude, about on line with Sao Paulo, Brazil.
SHAG ROCKS
Geologically the rocks are the smallest of the sub-Antarctic islands. The six small rock islands cover a total of about 50 acres. They are composed of the same kind of sedimentary rocks that constitute most of South Georgia itself. They are an extension of the South Georgia continental shelf 240 kilometers away. Since the Shag Rocks are mostly vertical spires rising out of the sea and covered with nesting shags they are virtually un-landable without special equipment and approval.
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