BERGS TO THE RIGHT OF US, BERGS TO THE LEFT OF US, BERGS ALL AROUND …

This morning, we traveled Southwest down the Gerlache Strait, islands to the North, the Antarctic Peninsula to the South. We began our sail early this morning at South 64 degrees, 4.616 minutes Latitude, and West 61 degrees, 52.81 minutes Longitude. In all directions there were snowy cliffs and rock, breath-taking cloud formations, bergs on every side. In the early hours, the ocean was black. You can only imagine the early mariners in ships no larger than the small tender that took us ashore in the Falklands coming south down this strait, not knowing what to expect, having mariner’s tools, but nothing like we have today, watching this land of wonder unfold, taking measurements, risking that they might become encased in ice and not return, and yet they pressed on.


We had sun and patches of blue sky that broke through the shades of black and white.

The cliffs that breed bergs are more obvious here, and the rocks beneath appear riven from the separation of berg from glacier and cliff.

The shapes of these bergs, like the lines and incidents of a human face, tell you something of the history and character of these bergs and bergy bits.

We saw seals on the bergs, rare birds that sailed almost motionless above on wind currents in silouhette waiting for the right moment to fish.

JPF

The Fishing is for the birds!

2-4-10, at 2PM, heading south toward Stanley in the Falklands, at S 44 degrees 49.541 mins, and W 56 degrees, 36.335 mins. As you probably know latitude runs from zero at the equator and increases as you travel south to 90 degrees at the South pole. If you check our GPS readings, you’ll see that we have passed the mark for South 40 degrees latitude, and you can tell by reading the longitude, that we moved east from Buenos Aires, and now we’re tacking slight West as we travel south toward the Falklands. When you’ve passed S 40 degrees, our fishing experts tell us that ships pick up all manner of birds. So we sat aft in the sunshine, the worst wind blocked by the ship behind us, and looked at the wide Atlantic panorama behind us, no land in sight, not for these near-sighted eyes. The water was wine dark (like Homer used to write) and an aquamarine highway in our wake, broken by extended white swells, and crashing waves, breaking higher than the morning waves, and in the splashes of dark and light blue color were the silhouettes of birds fishing aft, air surfers tilting sideways in flight with the changing angle of the waves. We’re almost certain it’s the albatross of Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner. With each sweep, it appears they pick a morsel from this oceanic buffet.  JPF