En Route from South Georgia to Falklands - 5 December 2007 - 7 December 2007
by Kate Laird

December 5
at sea, 52 : 48 South 051 : 59 West

We're motoring in no wind at the moment.Can't believe this is the Southern Ocean! Yesterday, I shook out a reef in my t-shirt. Standing watch, Hamish and I wear boots and foul weather gear trousers and t-shirts. Feet are inordinately hot. I cannot believe how lucky we have been with the weather. It is due to go on the nose tomorrow again, but still it has been remarkably light for the Southern Ocean.

We've had an amazing time with four wandering albatrosses which have stayed quite close to the boat for the last 24 hours. I am not entirely sure that they are the same birds; we'll have to compare photographs. Wandering albatrosses start out with black wings as young birds, and the wings go to white as they age. Extremely old ones have entirely white wings. I am not sure of the reason for this, but I speculate that perhaps it is because black wings are more costly to produce but stronger (at least in other birds; I don't know if this is true of Wandering Albatrosses). It would make sense that a bird soaring in the Southern Ocean where the wind regularly tops 60 knots would need strong wings, but perhaps that need would diminish as the bird became more adept at flying.

Wandering albatross.

Now that we're out of the ice, and we're beating to windward (or in this case motoring), our guests have stopped standing a watch. This is very unusual for us, but most everyone found it quite hard to helm on the apparent wind, so Jimmy the wind pilot has been doing the duty. It is the point of sail Jimmy likes best.

Most everyone has spent quite a lot of time on deck during they day, photographing these wandering albatrosses. It's quite unusual for us to see them so close to the boat for so long.

Everyone is up listening to Harry Potter on the IPOD, except H who is off watch and asleep or perhaps listening to Bill Bryson's The History of Everything on the children's IPOD! Books on IPOD are brilliant for those first days at sea when one doesn't feel like reading. I'm back reading now (EO Wilson, The Future of Life, which is rather depressing), but yesterday was the first day I really felt like it.

Helen and Anna are counting down the days until Christmas. They are also imagining that we are being followed by an enormous bull elephant seal, a harem of females and quite a few pups on our way to Stanley. They are planning to take the seals swimming with them in the pool at Stanely, but fear that the bull will not fit through the door, so he'll have to wait outside in the football field!

December 6
at sea, 52 : 10 South 055 : 18 West

Beautiful morning this morning, and finally a beam reach. There are albatrosses, wandering and black browed, pintados and white chinned petrels flying around the boat. Everyone is having a lie-in with the gentle motion.

We're chasing Abel Tasman. We caught them up to within 6 miles last night, but we talked to them on the VHF and they are still motoring and we are sailing to save diesel, so they're getting ahead of us again. But it's a lovely change to be sailing, as we had the motor on almost all day yesterday.

December 7
Stanley, Falkland Islands

We arrived in Stanley yesterday evening after a beautiful warm sunny afternoon with absolutely zero wind. We were up and about on deck in T-shirts...not at all like the Southern Ocean. It is rougher at the dock right now than it was out there!

For more about Seal see http://www.expeditionsail.com.