Posts Tagged ‘wildlife’

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January 31, 2010 – Isla Riesco, Chile
By Herb McCormick

If you ever find yourself shipwrecked, there are worse places you could wash up than on the shores of Bahia Mussel on the regally titled Chilean island of Isla Carlos III. Yes, it’s cold and damp, and there certainly isn’t a town, or even a soul, for many, many miles, but you definitely wouldn’t starve to death or die of thirst. For a clear, cool stream running out of a lovely mountain lake empties out at the head of the deep, protected bay, and the rocky beach itself is covered with hundreds of thousands of tasty morsels of shellfish. It’s certainly no mystery how the place got its name. The shores of Bahia Mussel might as well be called Mussel Beach.

Ocean Watch’s continued tour of the beautiful channels of Southern Chile continued today, but with minimal progress along the wide waterway known as the Magellan Strait. After an overnight stay at anchor off Isla Carlos III, the crew set out early this morning bound westward down the Strait. But howling headwinds of 35-knots had the waters churning and roiling, and after pounding into it for just a couple of hours, skipper Mark Schrader decided to seek shelter in another taut anchorage off nearby Peninsula Cordova called Bahia Borja. It’s no doubt a coincidence, but the tall peaks of Borja, complete with weeping waterfalls on high, bear a striking resemblance to the South Pacific paradise of Bora-Bora. That is, of course, if the summits of Bora-Bora were also speckled with snow.

At the moment, waiting for the winds to wane, we may not be covering great distances, but we are getting the opportunity to have a good look at some of the breathtaking scenery surrounding us.

Last night, once the hook was set, I plopped my Little Wing carbon-fiber kayak into the drink for a nice paddle in the calm anchorage, but the highlight of the outing was when I pulled the boat ashore and started climbing. My water booties, it turned out, were just the ticket for a hike on Isla Carlos III. To say the tundra was spongy would be a major understatement. It was mossy, soggy and bouncy; traction was more of a concept than a reality.

An old sailing friend of mine named Bill Storandt has sailed his sloop across the Atlantic and all through the Mediterranean Sea, and he has a habit I’ve tried to adopt whenever possible. Once he’s suitably anchored for the evening, he rows ashore, climbs the highest hill possible, and takes a snapshot of his boat for posterity. With Bill in mind, though the footing was sloppy, I aimed my sights for a steep ridge and started walking.

It turned out to be worth the sweat. Once I’d reached the top and caught my breath, the view of the anchorage, Ocean Watch and the majestic waters of the Magellan, lined with snow-capped mountains, was truly awesome. I lingered for a while, then tripped and stumbled my way back to sea level, where I startled a pair of geese that went flapping hysterically to either side of my head, just a few feet away. It scared the heck out of me, but I guess the birds were probably thinking the same thing.

The highlight of this morning’s brief underway foray was a pair of breeching humpback whales – a mother and a baby? – for which this current stretch of the Straits of Magellan are known. Once we were secure in Bora-Bora – er, Bahia Borja – another shore party dropped the dinghy in the water and had a wet hike on the peninsula, which they likened to a rainforest. For those who’ve read Joshua Slocum’s Sailing Alone Around the World, the name might be familiar. It was on the shores of Bahia Borja that Slocum tacked a wooden “name board” to a tree labeled with the name of his boat, the Spray, an age-old tradition amongst sailors in this part of the world.

This afternoon, when it appeared things were calming down, the skipper decided to give it another shot, and Ocean Watch again headed out into the Strait. But it was a short-lived venture, for the westerly was still piping. Back in we came, not much worse for wear, and we re-anchored in pretty much the exact spot where we’d spent most of the day. Before long, the sun broke through the clouds and just astern was a low, lovely rainbow, with one end on the water and the other, amazingly, on a white goose resting on a rock.

“It’s the goose that laid the golden egg,” said Dave Logan, and we all had a laugh. Well, maybe, but one thing is beyond reproach: It’s not something you’d see on Bora-Bora.

-Herb McCormick with additional photographs by David Thoreson

*This crew log submitted by Iridium OpenPort and Stratos

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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