Cape Town to Melbourne Wks 3 and 4: John Ridgway Save the Albatross Voyage 2003-4

1 Conversation

The Voyage Story by John Ridgway

THE CROZETS

Date: Saturday 8 November 2003
Nick, driving the boat forward

A lumpy, bumpy day with grey everything. Despite strong winds, we made poor progress in thick fog and rain. This was a suitable day for our first sighting of an Antarctic Fulmar, maybe from the Crozet Islands, which are by noon are only 160 miles up ahead.



We're now a couple of weeks out of Cape Town and people are coping with things in their own way. Gritty, frozen Igor is sunny and carefree. Playfully caught up with Arnie Schwarzenegger's new career. It seems our hero had woken up one morning to find his wife fixing him up with rather more than just a summer promo tour for Terminator 3. "Oh mein Gott, I'm in Polly Diggs!" Now he’s Governor of California.



Long thin Nick: ashen, devourer of manuals. Worries about communications. And everything he thinks others are not worrying about. Driving the boat forward, longest at the wheel. Solid gold.



Quentin comes on Watch, rushing up the ladder into the doghouse, throwing a pile of gear ahead of him, "Made it on time!" he gasps. Never mind the course, get those yellow lights going, switch on mobile satellite phone and the Palm Pilot. Call up Wagga Wagga, Washington or Wherever….there's a world to save out there. Was I like that 33 years ago? Yes.



Trevor clambers up the ladder, looking younger everyday; loving the sound of velcro in the morning. Measured, avuncular, prepared to discuss the journeys of despair he and I made coincidentally and quite separately, thirty years ago, to the Pomme D'Or nightclub in Portsmouth. He's read somewhere that the highest waves in the world are to be found on the Kerguelen Plateau up ahead. Unsure if he wants to see them.



Marie Christine, brusque, doing her watches, all the cooking, all the cleaning and 50% of all the washing up. Beats up her poor husband something cruel.



Me, worrying if the pain in my lower chest is a duodenal ulcer, stomach cancer or just a bruised sternum caused by being thrown onto the wheel against my safety harness. I can believe it’s all 3. "Mein Gott, I'm in Orni Dollogy!"



Around midnight we decided to gybe and take the northerly route round the fast approaching Crozet Islands.


Date: Sunday 9 November 2003
Young Wandering albatross


Bird sightings at noon: Sooty Albatross, Royal Albatross, Black Petrels, Sooty Petrels, White Chinned Petrels, Prions



Foggy and still. Just slipping along on a silky sea. Noon found us 130 miles NW of Ile Aux Cochons (Isle of Pigs). The islands are small and inhabited only by seabirds. The pigs were probably put there for shipwrecked sailors in the days of sail. Maybe they found them and ate them all. Then what?



With the absolute silence of 2 or 3 knots (neither wind generator or towing generator work at this speed), time alone at the wheel in the fog offers "The bliss of solitude". A chance to study the visitors, who come ghosting in through the mist. Dainty Icebirds, incredible 12' wing span Wandering Albatrosses (how can that span be supported by a wing only 9" from front to trailing edge?). Cheery piebald Cape Pigeons, and the newcomer, the Antarctic Fulmar, so much like our own Fulmar at home in NW Scotland, save for the white patch on the end of it's grey wing. The Sooty and White-chinned Petrels and the tiny Storm Petrels or Mother Carey's chickens.



How many millions of years have they been here? How did they learn to fly? How trivial is my own lifetime in all of this?



Why must we needlessly destroy them all, now in this particular generation? Surely, if we can get to the moon, we can stop this needless slaughter of the Albatross?



What can you do? Or do you just not care? I'm sure you haven't got much time and you have many rather more pressing problems to solve.



Well, the very least you can do is sign our SAVE THE ALBATROSS PETITION - on the www.savethealbaross.org - NOW. I'll try and sail round the World and take the Petition to the UN, in Rome. You just sign it. Go on, SIGN IT.



To stop pirate fishing, all countries must take action to:
1. End flags of convenience (FoC) for fishing vessels, and close all markets and ports to FoC vessels and their stolen fish.
2. Ratify all relevant international agreements to protect Albatrosses and other marine life, including the United Nations Fish Stock Agreement;
3. Enforce protection at sea and intercept pirate vessels.



You CAN HELP end the needless slaughter of the Albatross.



Please sign and put an end to Pirate fishing.


Date: Monday 10 November 2003
Igor, running east

A surging day. Running due east, we’re passing about a hundred miles north of the Crozet Is. And under full sail we have the old ship making nine miles in the hour, trying to build the big MO for Kerguelen (Fr), or Desolation Island as it’s known, which is a further seven hundred miles ahead. Quentin the ‘Secret Agent’, promises good intelligence once we are south of the Antarctic Convergence. With the sea temperature now only 5C, we are all in good spirits and bearing up well to the hard cold routine.



As well as signing the Petition, which I published in the log yesterday, there are some other things you could do to save the Albatross.



The Patagonian Toothfish is caught at depths of around 2,000 metres in the Southern Ocean. A single sashimi-grade fish can be worth US$1,000. They fall to some of the 1 billion hooks laid down here each year. Albatrosses fall to many of the hooks too.



Now, we're not talking about fish to feed the starving millions. No, these fish are eaten by Palm-Pilot folk, people with freedom to make choices in restaurants and super-markets. Patagonian Toothfish is not an attractive name, so it appears in restaurants as SEA BASS in USA and UK, MERO in Japan, LEGUNE in France. Please just stop buying it! And don't hesitate to tell the seller why.


Date: Tuesday 11 November 2003


Endless fog but still favourable wind. Warm air over cold water. Our ‘Intelligence’ is improving as we approach Kerguelen Plateau but it’s unwise to reveal all at this point. Everyone is suffering a bit from the relentless cold and the thought that it will get colder once south of the Antarctic Convergence doesn’t make this any better. We all know this good weather isn’t going to last indefinitely.

Washing up my way

This Leg looks as if it might over-run by a couple of weeks at least. We need to conserve drinking water, so I’ve penned a verse for the Log:



“Six wooden bowls piled high

A dearth of water did I spy!

Must cut back on washin’ up

Lick your bowl like a hungry pup!

Swill some water in that dish

Get it down like a gurglin’ fish.”



Here is something you could do to help the Albatross. Go to your nearest Aquarium and ask them to set up a montage for the Save the Albatross Petition on a wall within the building, plus a facility for easy signing. Ask them if they will link up with other aquariums round the country, round the world even. Japan is developing its +100 Aquariums. This is a way you could help save the Albatross.



Thanksalotty, John Ridgway


Date: Wednesday 12 November 2003

Bird sightings at noon: 15 Prion, 1 Wandering Albatross, 5 White Chinned Petrels, 1 Grey headed Albatross, 4 Sooty Petrels



There’s a certain relentlessness to all this. We are heading southeast again and still there is fog. But the wind is light and for here and the weather is kind.



For a while we had a lone King Penguin stitching the water 20 feet or so from our stern. A cheery fellow he was a particular delight to Marie Christine. A striking colour he grows to 3.75 feet high, weighs up to 26lbs and has been known to dive to 787 feet for squid. He does his breeding on sub-Antarctic islands like Kerguelen.

I wasn't convinced Igor and Nick understood the pain I was in


The highlight of the day for others was Dental Surgery at 1100 hrs. Gazing up at the white deckhead, I thought “surely these dentists should be retired by now?” Which route down my root canal were they going to take? Marie Christine, short hair, and gold rimmed glasses, looks uncomfortably like Anne Robinson attacking the ‘Weakest Link'. She has mirrors and long shiny steel spikes. Hovering by her side, Trevor peers down enthusiastically at the fatal lower jaw with its missing filling. Balling his fists with enthusiasm, desperate to have ago himself “Knock him out, nurse - I'm going in and I’m going deep!”



"Oh Gawd!" I thought, remembering the two hours in that Dentist’s chair in the Cape Town "If this filling fails the tooth may disintegrate and that would be serious", Benjie Lowrie had muttered. “When you reach Melbourne, get it capped as soon as you possibly can!"



My wife screwed home the white paste. Both practitioners look grave, telling me it will soon harden but it seems just like chalk paste to me. Will I have to go aboard the Russian Icebreaker at Heard Island - will their part-time dentist be like Laurence Olivier in Marathon Man?



All the while, Sat phone calls to Quentin gather pace. Australian skippers are keen to RV in the snow somewhere. Better than knitting and gardening?



Trevor’s Verse on Shipmates hearing the Antarctic Owl

“I'm the Antarctic Owl,

A fabulous fowl

Resembling the Dodo or Moa.

Ornithologists insist,

Since I'm not on their lists,

I'm as dead as a Dowager's Boa.

The fact is I'm heard

By a small gifted few.

To Doubters I say

Look me up in who who.”

*Twit*


Date: Thursday 13 November 2003
Young Wandering Albatross

Bird sightings at noon: 2xGreyheaded Albatross, 1xWandering Albatross, 15 prions, 15 White-chinned Petrels, 2xSealions, 1 Elephant Seal.



A perfect morning, with bluest sky and whitest rollers and a good direction to match. A couple of small brown seals gambolled around us.



I waved at a Wandering Albatross "Aye Aye Cap'n" I called, as he looked me in the eye. He rolled onto his side and waggled his tail, as if to say "Good on yer, old top!" I was really chuffed. He skimmed a few waves, rather kicking his heels, really. I thought I heard him say "Look, you can only do 150 miles a day - If I step on the pedal a bit I can do 1500. What say I nip on ahead and get ‘em to put the kettle on?"



"A fishing buoy! A fishing buoy!" shouted the Secret Agent from the wheel.



"How has he done it?" we asked ourselves. More magic?



"Oh no, sorry, it's an Elephant Seal" he called down.



The wind rose steadily all morning and by lunchtime we had a full gale. The rest of the day was spent reducing sail and the night holding the nerve, while plunging down the overtaking waves which filled the cockpit on several occasions.


Date: Friday 14 November 2003
Wandering Albatross

Hello! When Marie Christine and I came on watch at midnight we found miserable little notes in the Log from the other watches. Both 2000-2200 Trevor and Quentin and 2200-2400 Nick and Igor, reported the middle and aft cockpits filled by breaking waves. Though the outlook was grim, we were in for a spot of luck, the wind was easing and we managed to stay dry. It's snowing and most people are complaining of feet like blocks of ice in their bunks.



Trevor noted my sovereign remedy for cold feet:



“O Captain brave, O Captain bold!

My seaboot socks are wet and cold

Tell me what I have to do

To keep me safe from sailor’s flu’

‘Now listen, lad, my way with socks

Will keep you clear of cold and pox –

Open up your armpits wide

And shove the socks in side by side.

Sleep three hours in your bed –

The socks come out like toasted bread.

You’ll know no more of cold and cramp –

And never need deodorant.”



During the day conditions improved. We were surrounded by a great number of birds: Albatrosses, Cape Pigeons, Sooty and White-Chinned Petrels. But most of all Prions or Ice Birds as they are called, fortunately, like Storm Petrels, they are too small to take hooks baited with frozen squid.



Spectacularly aerobatic, I have seen Ice Birds actually flying backwards, at head height not 20 feet from the side of the boat. They are all Petrels, a derivative of Peter, for their ability to 'walk on water' as they pick up Plankton from the surface.



We are fast closing on our Waypoint 111, which is fishing ground 1, on the very edge of the Kerguelen Plateau.



The Secret Agent has produced charts awash with pink and blue patches denoting Target Areas. When I think about it, how I admire him for choosing this as a way of life. Rather than sitting on his bum and whinging like so many of us.



Some dreadful things are quietly happening, over the horizon on the great ownerless, unprotected oceans. Gradually we will see fish disappearing from the menus. And there will be only be films of seabirds to remind us of what we did. At the CCAMLR meeting in Hobart this week France has owned-up to killing 27,000 seabirds in the past couple of years. Most of those would have been right here - Kerguelen is a French territory.



But I just think how many have been killed, illegally and unreported, by Pirates.



There must be a way to regulate fishing before it's too late. It just needs a willing Skipper on every boat. That's all it needs.


Date: Saturday 15 November 2003Immature Black-browed albatross

Imagine you are a 65 year-old man who's led a fairly hectic, mostly athletic life, driven by a love of excitement and a need to earn a living. You are now retired and find yourself looking down from your cottage at a magic carpet stretching right around the world. On the carpet there lies a white 60' ketch, too big to attract a buyer. And to big to afford, as a hobby. Now well aware of your own mortality you decide on one more fling –‘beyond the far horizon’. Most encouragingly, your wife of 40 years agrees to accompany you leaving behind loved children and grandchildren.



The price you must pay, for there's 'owt for nowt', is that you must focus on the seabirds which will surround you as you stand those long hours alone at the wheel.



And, as time goes by, among these swirling birds, a pattern emerges, it's your own life: childhood, youth, adulthood, seniority.



The sun shines, making rainbows in the mist; and these seabirds become indescribably beautiful and precious. The very spirit and essence of existence. Take them away and there will be nothing, nothing.



Please don't destroy them.


KERGUELEN

Date: Sunday 16 November 2003

Searchlight beams of Aurora Australis light the night sky. We have dreadful propagation for HF radio Sailmail, is it the active Aurora or just Maputo down again, in far away Africa?



Our Iridium aerial on the stern has been crumpled by a wave, so Nick rigs up a bit of a car aerial inside the dome and claims dramatic improvement. We haven't been able to connect on the Iridium phone for weeks - tomorrow we'll have a trial to Marie Christine's mother in Brighton.



By noon we are just off the north end of Kerguelen in really dense fog and the sea is that familiar brown colour of shallow waters. Seabirds are few.



"We have a target, 7 miles fine on the starboard bow!" It was just after lunch and Trevor's ‘Leader Voice’ set alarm bells for Action Stations a'ringing all over the ship, cutting though any thoughts of a siesta.



Marie Christine stayed in the galley. I accelerated my shaving in the After Heads. It's never certain what Igor is up to in the Forward Heads. Quentin bestrides the De Lesseps Panama Canal plank at the wheel, a vision in green, red and yellow with super-cool sun glasses and a ghastly quasi-beard. Trevor looks calm but concerned. Nick clambers up into the Doghouse and scans the radar. "It's moving away from us at 3.5 knots", he proclaims.



"Oh wow! This is actually It." I think, "A pirate fisherman at last".



Igor even agrees to ‘abbreviate’, at least that's how I understand his muffled mumblings through the watertight door into the forward heads.



Now everyone but Marie Christine is by the wheel or peering out of the Doghouse hutch. Quentin, the professional negotiator, doesn't want to be on the radio. I want to steer the boat right at the Pirate. But Nick thinks ought I should be on the radio to the Pirate Captain.



A simple white sailing boat jilling along downwind, at 4 knots downwind. No markings on the sails or hull, save the red GBR 1218 on the mainsail. Innocent.



I ask Marie Christine (passed French Interpreter’s Exam, 43 years ago) to man the radio. Meanwhile, Trevor and Quentin think up penetrating questions for pirates. By now even Igor is all set with his cameras and with the fixed video camera on the mizen mast pointing forward, I can aim the boat like a rifle.



Leaving Trevor and Quentin on watch, everyone heads below, to prepare themselves for the Engagement.


Ilot du Rendevous emerged out of the mist

"It's big. It's five miles……is it a rock?" The Leader Voice calls. I scuttle back up the ladder to the chart table in the doghouse. Right at the very top, part of View A, on the chart, there it was: Ilot du Rendezvous, tiny but 230 feet high.



Trevor was awarded a gold star for his Leader Feat. I was not!


Date: Monday 17 November 2003

Bird sightings at noon: Many South Georgia Petrels and 35+ Black-backed gulls .



We had a glassy calm night of motoring cautiously in the fog, off the rocky east coast of Kerguelen. Dawn found us passing through floes of kelp off a strangely low flat tabular land and it took a while to work out that this was an illusion, caused by the fog hanging some fifty feet above the sea. The 1954 chart showed Provision Depots set at intervals along the coast for the unfortunate.



Luckily the visibility improved. By 1100 we were moving steadily up what seemed like a typically Scottish sea loch with snowy mountains poking above the clouds, when we passed an old French supply ship, the Marion Defresnes, which visits the island but twice a year!



Just before 1400 we picked up a mooring at Port Aux Francais, a bleak tangle of barrack blocks on low treeless moorland. Windswept is an understatement, the last yacht here ended up on the beach, there have been only two in the past year.



The Research Station has some 60 residents in summer, only 30 in winter; they are scientists and biologists mostly, with French Navy and Army personnel to run logistics.



Marco and Olivier, Petty Officers of the French Navy, of the picked us up in a RIB. On the wharf three ornithologists, all in their early twenties, waited to take us to a meeting in the smart, warm HQ Building.



Amelie, elfin and bright, spoke fair English. Fabrice, a John Lennon lookalike, shy and sincere was quietly spoken.



Cedric, more assured, has been here over a year, gave us some copies of his lovely Albatross photos.

Meeting with Fabrice, Cedric and other


At first we sat rather awkwardly round a formal table. I asked Cedric if, after his time on Kerguelen, he was optimistic or pessimistic about the future of the Albatross. "Je suis desolee!” he replied haltingly, looking out of the window.



Amelie added "We have been studying a sample of 300 Albatrosses for two years now, this year they are only 240 – already 60 down - mostly female casualties" she warmed to a subject very close to her heart. "We find many fish hooks in the Albtrosses. The fishermen, if they catch them when their hauling in their line, they just cut the trace to save time. It is a horrible death.”



Fabrice butted in, surprisingly directly "The best chance for the Albatross is for the fishermen to catch all the fish - then they will go away!"



Kerguelen, Desolation Island as it’s know, is 70 miles North to South and 90 miles East to West. Its mountains rise to 6,000 feet and 1/3 of the surface is covered by its Ice Cap. There are hundreds of small islands and many fjords. It’s a historically notorious place for man's butchery of wild life. In 1843 it is said there were 600 whaling vessels on these coasts and we saw no sign of a whale today.



Between 1791 and 1873 the vast populations of seals were virtually exterminated, boiled down in huge cauldrons fuelled with local penguins.



Now it is the turn of the albatross.



Man hunts forever lower and lower down the food chain. Fishing on an industrial scale he’s now hunting the slow-growing Patagonian Toothfish, laying a billion hooks a year on the seabed of the Southern Ocean. Fishing at depths of 6,000 feet and more. As the human population doubles again and again, we'll soon be eating jelly-fish.



We just must regulate fisheries now. Surely if we can reach the moon, we can manage our fisheries?


HEADING FOR MELBOURNE

Date: Tuesday 18 November 2003

Surface sea temperature: 4.2 C
Bird sightings at noon: >50 Antarctic Prions, 1 x immature Wandering Albatross



We all slept through from 2200 last night till 0500 this morning. It was very odd to have no sound at all; at sea there is always noise from wind, water and gear.



We would love to have spent more time in Kerguelen but we dare not risk lying another night in this exposed anchorage. The navy people urged us to move into the lee of a small island some five miles away but that would not be helping the Albatross, we must get on to Melbourne.



After a good breakfast, at 0825 we switched on the faithful Mercedes. It was flat calm as we sounded our hooter and waved goodbye to friendly Marco on the quay.



An email tells us the latest Australian government satellite sweep of Heard Island Economic Exclusive Zone has revealed no pirate vessels in these waters. It is thought that’s probably because of the presence of the two Australian boats.

Leaving Kerguelen astern


Fog blanketed our departure through Passe Royale but we were greeted by a Force 7 – 8 southerly wind as we gained the open sea. Unfortunately this prevents us from laying Heard Island. But now we know there are no Pirates there anyway, I turned the boat for Melbourne and this was greeted with a hoarse cheer of approval.



3,150 miles to go, we are already two weeks behind schedule owing to our excursions around Marion, Crozet and Kerguelen Islands. Now we can swing along the wind at last - on the track of our old chum the Albatross, who was of course waiting to greet us on the gale at the mouth of Passe Royale.


Date: Wednesday 19 November 2003

By midnight the land had fallen away and we were treated to a grand display of the Aurora Australis. It was as if the white Antarctic had bathed the sky in light, as if the sun might be going to rise in the South rather than the East.



By the time Marie Christine and I came on Watch again at 0600, Nick and Igor had already gybed the sails to suit a rising north wind and gradually we increased speed all morning.

We increased speed all morning


Our old chums are here as usual, mostly in ones or twos: Wandering, Black Brow, Light-mantled Sooty and Grey-Headed Albatrosses, the odd White-chined Petrel, a pair of Pintados and the normal flock of Prions. As always there is just the occasional Storm Petrel.



Morale is high. Quentin, Trevor and Nick each have their own reasons for getting to Melbourne as soon as possible and Igor wants to warm his Peruvian hide. Marie Christine and I, well, we are just looking forward to getting home to the loved ones on Ardmore.


Date: Thursday 20 November 2003

Hello, is there anyone there? We have have so many problems with our communications that we haven't heard from anybody for some weeks now. Mainly we hope Carol Knutson is going to met us in Melbourne, we'd ring you Carol, if we could.

Trevor, calm and dependable.


Well we're bowling along in bumpy grey, 300 miles east of Kerguelen. Few birds about, there must be a shortage of grub in these parts. It's one gale after another and the water temperature fell to 3.2C; good thing we’re not sailing across a freshwater lake, we'd soon be set in a solid block.


Date: Friday 21 November 2003

Moderate to rough sea on the beam, icy spray and hail blowing across the boat and straight into your face at the wheel.



"Hello..." I can hear the empty echo returning. Another gale, or is it all part of the same one? It’s all very grey and lumpy.



Icy breath mists off people as they eat their omelette lunch in the Saloon. Delicious.



Omelette because at 0950 we were hit by wave which knocked me down at the wheel and put the boat on its side.

A sombre mood.


"Never put all your eggs in one basket" Marie Christine had chortled at Trevor, a couple of days earlier, as she conducted yet another re-shuffle grocer's store below the Doghouse. It has to be open plan in order to keep the rations fresh.



Very luckily it was two red plastic baskets. When the wave hit us 50 eggs took to the air and flew for their individual targets like Japanese fighters heading for Pearl Harbour. How one squadron has managed to finesse the corners to splatter the after Heads door for modern art, no one can figure out; it makes 'Top Gun' look easy.
Anyway, Marie Christine did not take kindly to the attack. She was soon on her way to 'Midway', hurling flasks and saucepans through a curtain of steaming water like a good'un. At least they were not coming at me for a change.



Generally there is a sombre mood. No Pirates means goodnight on this Leg really. Ah well life's up and down, we'll head north to warm the crew and get back on to Sailmail, without communications it's been like the dark ages.



Fewer Albatrosses now, the poor old things; their trouble is, nobody sees them out here over the horizon. Like the fish there's just no effective body to represent and protect them.



What a difference a couple of days north-east makes.: 3.2C at Kerguelen, today 8.6C – of course it’s still quite a step to the 31C we had near the Equator but we've definitely cleared the Antarctic Convergence



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