January 16, 2010 – Stanley, Falkland Islands
By Herb McCormick
There may be clumsier terrestrial creatures stumbling and bumbling their way across the face of this planet, but it’s difficult to say precisely who or what they might be. Nope, when it comes to awkward, ungainly, and lumbering forward motion, there is nothing more inept than a penguin.
For example, on Thursday, standing right at the tide line along the magnificent stretch of beach called Volunteer Point on the easternmost edge of East Falkland Island, I watched the last, crawling remnants of a broken wave knock a king penguin right off his pins. As the big, plump guy was advancing seaward in a mighty waddle, a little wavelet caught him about where your shins are, and toppled him forward inelegantly as if he’d been chop-blocked or shot.
Timber!
Splat!
As far as beak plants go, it was a solid “10.” Unabashed, the tuxedoed dude picked himself up, shook himself off, and rejoined the gang heading out for a swim. Once he hit deep water and was in his true element it was all a very different story, of course, and one we will get to in a moment.
Yesterday, the crew of Ocean Watch was topping off fuel tanks, tending to laundry, finishing off the grocery list, and readying themselves for a Friday evening presentation on their voyage at the Stanley Chamber of Commerce. It’s been a fast and lively week, punctuated by rather unseasonable weather on one hand, and the chance to meet many of the friendly Falkland islanders on the other. One thing’s for certain: We’re not in South America anymore. Whereas in the resort city of Mar del Plata, Argentina, the restaurants didn’t really get going until 10 p.m., by that time in Stanley, they’ve all been closed an hour. It’s hard to imagine what the late-dining, up-all-night Argentines would’ve done had they actually won the 1982 war here, other than perhaps starve to death afterwards.
The original plan when we arrived in the Falklands was to spend a few days investigating some of the outer islands, but with gales raking the archipelago for most of the week, it was prudent to remain dockside. That’s not to say we didn’t have a look around. Take Wednesday, for instance. Dark, cloudy squalls packing gusts to 35-knots were roiling the main harbor into a streaky, frothy maelstrom. The weather was bad and getting worse. In other words, in the Falklands, it was a lovely day for a walk.
We piled into local teacher Elaine Messer’s 4×4 for the six- or seven-mile drive out to Gypsy Cove and Yorke Bay, the nearest places to downtown Stanley for scenic walks and wildlife sightings. Along the way we saw a couple of shipwrecks, including the rusting hulk of the three-masted Lady Elizabeth, built in iron in the U.K. in 1879, and done with duty once-and-for-all after clipping a shallow rock in 1913. It’s never a bad thing for sailors to be reminded of the hazards when they’re traversing potentially treacherous waters, and the Lady Liz sounded a warning we heard loud and clear.
Once we’d hit the trail, the remnants of the gun station at pointedly named Ordnance Point, one of fourteen manned defense sites during the war – and the roped-off areas where land mines have not yet been cleared – were reminders of a different sort, of a fractured but significant chapter in the history of these beautiful, wind-swept islands.
And beautiful they are. “I don’t know whether I like this place better in the sunshine or on a day like this,” said Elaine. Her point was obvious: the shoreline was all the more dramatic under scudding gray clouds and with the big breeze rustling through the green tussock.
“There’s just something about these wild places at the ends of the earth,” said David Thoreson, between squints through his camera’s viewfinder.
On Thursday, at Volunteer Point, we discovered an even wilder spot.
To get there, skipper Mark Schrader had lined up a pair of 4×4s, and the long, mostly off-road drive out, across spongy, uneven tundra and muddy bogs, was a bone-jarring experience. But after a couple of long hours, we crested a small ridge and the view ahead was no longer a wide plain of highly shaky terrain, but a breathtaking expanse of sandy, white beach. With the wind blowing the tops off the endless sets of steep, greenish-blue rollers, it was clear the pounding had been worth it, loose fillings or not.
Volunteer Point is the largest king penguin colony in the Falkland Islands, but it’s also home to many other birds, including steamer ducks, thrushes, rock shag, skuas and geese, as well as a couple of other penguin species, the Gentoo and the Magellanic, known locally as “jackasses.”
“Those are the jackasses all right, I just heard one bray like one,” said Dave Logan as we strolled down the beach. The king penguins have their own, different language, a singsong nasal twang in a five-part cadence: “Rrr-rrr-rrr-rrr-rrr.” In concert with the sheep in the background, it all made for quite the racket.
There are over a thousand breeding adult king penguins in the colony at Volunteer Point, and over 500 chicks are raised there each year. Unlike the more skittish Gentoo and jackass penguins, the kings seemed relatively un-phased by the proximities of humans. After an afternoon of wandering around with them, we all had our favorite stories. Logan spied a protective parent wallop a skua edging in on a chick. David T watched a trio try to negotiate the long step from a sand dune down to the beach, without luck, until one decided to take the leap and tumbled forward like another felled tree.
“The dune was about six inches high,” said David. “It might as well have been Mount Everest.”
On the beach, big bullets of breeze were whipping up miniature sand storms. “Even the oystercatchers are walking today,” noted Logan. It made what appears to be difficult balancing acts at the best of times seem next to impossible. On the penguins marched, flippers a-flapping, like tightrope walkers without poles, straining for balance. One of the locals described it well: “They amble along like their shoelaces are tied together.”
However, all that changed when the birds hit the surf. Entering the water, they almost burrow into the first, shallow waves, with fins in full flutter mode. Once clear of that initial break, they swim underwater at incredible speed. When the jackass penguins surface and rest they could be mistaken, in shape and profile, for a loon.
Every once in a while, you’ll see one leap and dive, doing their best imitation of a porpoise. But mostly they swim, fast and free, their sleek black bodies sliding below the surface like a living torpedo. My own lasting memory will be the penguins I saw in full bodysurfing mode, nestled in the curl. On this voyage Around the Americas, we’ve seen some amazing wildlife, but for the life of me I’ll never forget the sight of those penguins, those natural surfers, slashing through the green room.
- Herb McCormick with photographs by David Thoreson
This crew log submitted by Iridium OpenPort and Stratos
