PREVENTING THE NEEDLESS SLAUGHTER OF THE ALBATROSS

The Voyage Story: Getting to the Start by John Ridgway

Looking for something rather testing to mark my 65th birthday, we were not disappointed with our ‘Save the Albatross Round the World Voyage 2003/4’ from Ardmore – Canary Is. – Cape Town – Kerguelen Is. – Melbourne – Wellington – Falkland Is. – Azores – France – London – Ardmore.

It began with a whimper. Emotionally and physically exhausted from our final season, we sailed out of Ardmore so tired and seasick that we simply limped across the Minch and collapsed for the night at Mariveg on the Outer Hebrides.

Next morning, there was an accident with the seawater exhaust cooling and we very nearly returned to Ardmore. But not quite. For several miserable grey days we bashed south into lumpy headwinds.



This was English Rose VI’s third sail round the world and up in the doghouse on midnight watches, gazing into the black bucket, the abyss of our self-pity, Marie Christine and I knew very well just what we were letting ourselves in for in our thirty year-old uninsured boat. Hadn’t we bitten off more than we could chew?

There were two others with us on that first Leg down to the Canaries. Nick Grainger (53), intrepid ex-JRAS Instructor from back in 1971, had never been on the boat before but was to become a mainspring stalwart throughout the next eleven months. Never seasick, Nick loved everything about the voyage from beginning to end. By contrast, with only a half-day’s experience of the sea his watch-mate Scotty (18) was terribly seasick. Pressed into service only at the very last minute, Scotty battled gamely on but he was nursing the note I’d written, guaranteeing we’d fly him back to Scotland from the Canaries.

I had only one vague contact on the Canaries. Approaching Tenerife I emailed ahead: “If you are interested in sailing part or the whole way round the world with us, be on the pier at ten o’clock on Monday morning”. And she was! Crew from a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) in South Africa had pulled out at the last minute; Marie was a complete stranger but we took her on anyway.

Leaving Tenerife we had to protect our failing standing rigging and the uninsured mainmast, so the four of us sailed hesitantly, keeping well off the wind. We took a ten-week route, curving out towards South America before turning east and running downwind to Cape Town. Off Brazil I hoped to meet up with my first Albatross in this the sixth decade of my visits to the old bird; I was very aware that this was probably the last time I’d have the freedom of such a meeting in a boat of my own.

The Home of the Yellow Nosed

Euan Dunn, Senior Marine policy Officer, at the RSPB had been so helpful in focussing our Albatross work in the weeks before the start. By satellite, he briefed us on the , the first species we were likely to encounter. Together with Gough Island, which lies a little further to the south, Tristan da Cunha is the only place where the Atlantic Yellow-nosed Albatross breeds. We had really enjoyed our visit to Tristan eight years previously; there are only eight families there and it’s probably the most remote permanent community in the World, with the lowest level of air-contamination. I was planning to pass close enough to call in again if time allowed. Research at the Albatross colonies there indicated a 58% reduction over three generations and the species had just been upgraded, from Near-Threatened in 2000 to Endangered in 2003. In September 2003, there were approximately 35,000 breeding pairs remaining and if the Threat did not abate, population models suggested the species might need to be classified Critically Endangered, the final category before becoming Extinct. The Threat was chiefly from longlines, including around 900 birds killed annually off SE Brazil where it is one of the commonest followers of fishing boats. Many are also killed off Uruguay and by Japanese and Taiwanese tuna longliners fishing close to the surface off South Africa, where it also attends trawlers. Proportionately more females are killed than males, which is worse for the population’s ability to breed and grow than if both sexes suffered equally.

Outside its breeding season, the Atlantic Yellow-nosed Albatross disperses throughout the South Atlantic but mainly between 15 and 45 degrees South. We were already over 22 degrees South and had seen no birds of any kind for days. Was this empty place a taste of the future? Like Rachel Carson’s ‘Silent Spring’. We comforted ourselves with the thought that it was already mid-September and the breeding season had just begun, so there may not be many Albatrosses remaining in equatorial waters.

A week later and we were still waiting. I saw the first Albatross on the 85th day since leaving home, at 28/20 South 20/03West at 0915 in the morning. Arcing its brilliant white underside across our wake it came right over our stern before shooting off to the west. It flew like a long narrow plank, balanced in the centre, the ends curving down under their own weight. Peering after it, through the grey drizzle, I thought how worthwhile it all was: all the time and savings. I was thrilled. If there is such a thing as re-incarnation, this is what I would like to become – an Albatross ranging across the globe, covering maybe a thousand miles in a day.

Into Cape Town

Limping into Cape Town, the South Africans made us very welcome. Samantha Petersen was sitting her Master’s Finals at the time; she could spare only two days a week to run the World HQ of the Save the Albatross Campaign from her flat on the outskirts of town. But she had already laid solid groundwork for our arrival: dotty ‘Save the Albatross’ pensioners made good copy for the national TV News, documentary films, radio, newspapers and magazines.

In a funny sort of way we had got off to a very good start for the Albatross. Aldo Berutti, Head of BirdLife South Africa, rang from Johannesburg to say our stay in Cape Town had created more publicity for the Albatross than any project they’d ever had.

Meanwhile, from her Royal Forest and Bird office in Wellington, New Zealand, Carol Knutson was launching our ‘Save the Albatross Petition’ on the web and it really took off all round the World, eventually producing 105,000 signatures from 131 countries.

New Crew

Marie had done us proud on the sail down from Tenerefe. Now, as now she flew home to England, one by one the three-watch Southern Ocean crew flew in, we were to be an international crew. Nick Grainger (Aus) was joined by Igor Asheshov (39) from Peru, who had sailed with us in the Antarctic. Trevor Fishlock (60) from Wales was leader of the third watch, he’d sailed both ways across the North Atlantic with us in 2001 and was writing about the Albatross for the Financial Times on this Leg to Melbourne. Trevor’s watch-mate was Quentin Hanich (33) from Australia. First of the BirdLife International Volunteers, Quentin was on leave from his position in GreenPeace. Marie Christine and I made up the other watch.

Departure for the Southern Ocean

We sailed on the 25th anniversary of our start from Cape Town, in this same boat, on the 1977 Whitbread Race. It was springtime in the Southern Ocean. Snow and ice on every forecast. This was the true start of the Voyage, tracking the flight of the Wandering Albatross round the globe through the Southern Ocean.

We tracked pirate long-line fishing boats and saw many albatrosses. Losing our self-steering early on meant everyone had to take their trick at the wheel whatever the weather.

To read the Logs sent from the yacht each day during the voyage from Ardmore to Cape Town, go HERE