There is no private, prior language. No baby talk nor word of god has meaning beyond our shared agreement. Today, it seems, our shared language has betrayed us, is fading to leave only the emoticon of a tear. Real things exist whatever their names on our charts. You can be shipwrecked on Isla … Continue reading
The Salisbury Plain trip left us all smiles at the antics of the wildlife – and each other. Quite a few crew members made it ashore. Harko and others took a zodiac cruise along the length of the beach. Everyone enjoyed the sunshine and the antics of penguins and seals, including … Continue reading
All colonies have a highway (or several) to the sea, like this one at Salisbury Plain. They use this route to the sea and it is important not to disrupt it: penguins have right of way on their commute. The chinstraps, like those at Half Moon Bay, like their rocky, … Continue reading
At the southern point of the Bay of Isles lies a large lagoon, held back from the sea by a large shingle bank and fringed by a large flat delta of glacial streams coming to the sea: Salisbury Plain, the second largest colony in South Georgia. Continue reading
The prion (in Antarctica, where there are no cows) is an abundant seabird. There are several species, primarily differentiated by their bills. They fly fast and low and so I have no good pictures of them. The point of Prion Island In the Bay of Isles, though, is that it … Continue reading
By mid-afternoon the anchor was down in Rosita Harbour, a few miles along the coast at the edge of the Bay of Isles. We bustled ashore for a walk. The narrow beach was fringed with tussac grass where fur seals lounged about on the hummocks enjoying the sun. (There are … Continue reading
Elsehul was stunning: our next stop at Right Whale Bay is extraordinary. After a foggy start the cloud lifts in the bay leaving dark cloud across the north eastern horizon against which Europa lies at rest on calm water.We land stern first in surge onto a shelving black beach surrounded … Continue reading
The deep inlet of Elsehul, its steep sides coated in tussac grass, was out introduction to the wild, extraordinary beautify of South Georgia. The water is shallow enough for kelp forests to wave in the choppy surface for the fur seals to play in, and home to fish, birds and … Continue reading
The archipelago of South Georgia includes the study site of Bird Island, lying just off the north-western tip of the main island. Between them lies a rocky, narrow channel known as Bird sound. The detailed chart shows that the deeper water (the white bits) reduces to a narrow channel between … Continue reading
Easter Sunday at 0100 was a dark night with thick fog everywhere and not a chink of starlight. The wind was bashing at us, growling and pushing angry gusts. It was still five-layer cold as I sat on the bow watch, but becoming perceptibly warmer than the Weddell Sea. The … Continue reading
