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Home* Triplogs with photo galleriesAntarctic blog → The island of wind and Alba­tros­ses

The island of wind and Alba­tros­ses

The Sou­thern Oce­an – that sounds like some warm, quiet islands with bea­ches and palm trees. But that is the roaring for­ties, the furious fif­ties and the screa­ming six­ties. They keep living up to their bad repu­ta­ti­on today. That is quite a spec­ta­cle in its­elf, and of cour­se the­re was no serious thought about any zodiac crui­sing along Camp­bell Island’s wild cliff coasts, sear­ching for Yel­low eyed and Eas­tern Rock­hop­per pen­gu­ins, various Alba­tros­ses, Sea lions and so on, not to men­ti­on going ashore. Well, if we can’t get to them, may­be they will come to us. And they do! Dozens of Alba­tros­ses around the ship, and some pati­ence is reward­ed by sightin­gs of Yel­low-eyed pen­gu­ins plung­ing in the water near the ship. Brief sightin­gs, but … sightin­gs! The odd Sea lion jum­ping out of the waves. Have I ever seen this many Gre­at Alba­tros­ses in one place? I am quite sure I haven’t. Sou­thern Royals, all of them, as far as I can tell. And all the smal­ler o nes, Camp­bell alba­tross, ple­nty of Light-man­t­led soo­ties … the who­le lot.

Yellow-eyed penguin

The wind­me­ter is almost equal­ly inte­res­t­ing. A ste­ady 40-50 knots for a start, and then the gusts. The stron­gest one I have seen was 84 knots, that is a good 150 km/h. Wind force 12 on the Beau­fort sca­le starts at 64 knots. Force 12 is the last once, cal­led hur­ri­ca­ne. 84 knots.

f5_Campbell-Island_07Feb15_168

Fin­gers crossed for tomor­row mor­ning. If it is get­ting a bit (a good bit, that is) cal­mer, then we’ll go ashore on Camp­bell Island short­ly after sun­ri­se. That would, of cour­se, be the icing on the cake.

Campbell Island
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last modification: 2015-02-18 · copyright: Rolf Stange
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