Fog

As the fog which I had been watching creep malevolently and yet impersonally across the face of the sea finally wrapped us in its clammy grip, I took a last sighting off Cape George, a last glance at the shifting orb that was once the sun and then turned to the radar, depth sounder and chart. The chartplotter was offset to another bay which meant that according to its stupid computerised mind we were currently on land, on Cape George (which we most certainly were not), and I was not convinced enough of our position to reset it. This meant that we were relying on radar, the depth sounder and two charts; one, covering only a small area and therefore not as detailed in the right places as it could be and the other, more detailed one, surveyed in the 1970’s with its depths recorded in fathoms. Off the top of your head: What is the conversion from metres (which the depth sounder measures in) to fathoms? No? Nope me neither. As someone said later, we could see the tops of the mountains which was reassuring, however it was the bottoms of those vertical walls which rise so majestically from the water that I was worried about, so my eyes were definitely not soaring to those peaks. To turn starboard, out to sea, was the only option, with the dragons teeth gauntlet of rocks on our port side, but stay out too far to sea and Tristan da Cunha was the next stop. 

To explain how Sue and I found ourselves navigating on an unknown shore (not only for ourselves but for the Rib behind us, with Hazel and Erny in it, as well) I’ll backtrack a couple of days. 

This week seems to have been bounded by fog; almost every day I woke up and looked out of my window I would see the creeping tendrils on the surface of the sea, effectively erasing the mountains with their weight. Paula and I watched this and anxiously kept an eye on the weather forecasts because this week we were going to St Andrews come hell or high water. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that we tried to go to St Andrews but were foiled first by the weather and then by fishing vessels’ timetables slipping. We were going to do it this week and therefore I spent the entirety of Monday with Erny (the mechanic) fixing Luna’s engine. After the whole day wrestling with this inanimate brute of a machine we finally got it working which meant on Tuesday Paula could concentrate on packing for her holiday and I could concentrate on doing several runs to and from fishing vessels all day. 

We had two in so there was a bit of to-ing and fro-ing but it was fun. A break from endless maintenance at least. We have been told that KEP is a haven of weather before but I didn’t believe it till I went out to one of the fishing vessels for the third time and saw her caught in a bank of fog while we were in the clear sunshine. As I approached her, the air became softer and every edge became vague. It was a little spooky going into the bank of fog and I was reminded in no small way of the passage in C.S. Lewis’ “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader” when they enter a bank of fog and find themselves in a place where nightmares come true, desperately trying to row back out but getting themselves more and more lost. I just hoped that if I got lost an albatross would come, as in the book, and guide us out. 

Fog-bound fishing vessel

 Once we had got all the humdrum work done for the week we set out on Wednesday with full tanks and singing hearts. For the first time since I arrived here over 5 months ago, we got to Right Whale Rocks (which mark the edge of Cumberland Bay) and turned south. This was truly new coast for me. I have been up to Stromness (the other extended boating area to the north of the Bays) twice and when we arrived we came from the north, but south was a completely new concept to me, I had never gone this way even on a ship and now I was navigating to St Andrews Bay. I have described St Andrews Bay in previous blogs but it is the biggest King Penguin colony in the world, with 150,000 pairs, plus chicks!

A lot of penguins

 We had a very oily, uncomfortable swell to deal with on the way down, with rollers that had last seen land on South America so the trip wasn’t as pleasant as it could have been but it was still a wonderful experience to sail on with the bays passing us as we descended the coast. I noticed on the depth sounder that the water along the coast was much shallower than in Cumberland Bay. This must be because Cumberland Bay was scoured out when it was a glacier, leaving it with a bottom at 80-100m below sea level whereas most of the coast had been glacier free, meaning that the bottom was at 50-80m. 

We were 2 miles off the beach when we started being able to smell the colony, a sharp, guano smell that filled the air and made us wrinkle our noses. Soon the air was also thick with the cacophony of 150,000 pairs of penguins each calling to their partner, chick or neighbour at the top of their voice. Up to now the coast had been composed of steep cliffs and coves of varying precipitous drops, but as we rounded the corner a new vista greeted us. There are two glaciers that descend into the bay: The Cook and the Heaney glaciers. These, over the millennia, have scraped the mountains away from this bay and created a long, low, shallow beach of black sand that runs for about 2 nautical miles.As we got closer the heaving white mass focused itself into penguins everywhere you looked and as you looked harder, amongst the black and white mannequins were fuzzy brown shapes that turned out to be the chicks. It was really an incredible sight. 

Even more penguins

  We got all the kit we needed for the hut (first aid kit, emergency food, luxury items such as a tin of hot dogs for when people walked over here, repairs materials etc) on shore and then Jo, Paula, Hazel and Sue carted it all up to the hut and sorted it all out. While they were doing that I had to give poor old Erny some Stugeron since he was feeling quite queasy from the swell and we stayed on the jet boat, holding position till we were next needed. Going in to collect Hazel, Sue and the clatch (a BAS word meaning stuff) that we had removed from the hut, through bad management and bad luck, I managed to get the RIB very stuck on a shelf on the beach which necessitated about 10 minutes of hard pushing, pulling and swearing from the three of us until we finally got off. I will have to remove a fair amount of gravel from the water pipes of those engines I think. 

We left Paula and Jo at St Andrews for their holiday and proceeded to make our way back up the coast. We stopped in at all the boltholes along the route to check them out and to get them in our minds if ever we needed them. [My mother did ask nervously why we would need bolt holes to which I replied: “They are places in which we can shelter if we are out here with engine trouble or the weather picks up”. What I omitted to tell her was that they are also places where a group can camp if one of the boats should be lost to fire, flood or running into a rock, there are some things a mother doesn’t need to hear!] One of the bolt holes is Ocean Harbour so I was able to visit my old friend the ‘Bayard’ (a wreck) from another angle which was nice.

Inspecting the Bayard

 It was while investigating Godthul that the fog came in and we decided to make a quick exit and get home ASAP, which is where you found me at the beginning of this blog entry, nervously navigating my way through a pea souper reminding myself that navigating here was actually easier than navigating the River Thames in fog because there are no rowers or other boats with no radar signal to run into. 

As you may have guessed, from the fact that I am writing this blog, all’s well that ends well and as we passed West Skerry (a small island off Rookery) the fog lifted and we had a good run home. The rest of the week passed quite quietly with really not much happening. The only event of any significance has been the departure of the builders and Pat and Sarah. They left early on Saturday morning and we all came down to the jetty to say as jolly a farewell as we could muster. Some tears were shed and many promises of goodies to be sent our way on the next ship were given and as they pulled away from the dock we gave them a Mexican wave and then set off some flares to give them as good a send off as we could. We will all miss them and now (other than the SGHT (Rat) team which will be leaving soon) it is just us winterers left on base. 

The builders going didn’t really register because soon after they left Hazel, Rod, Daniel and I set off for what we cheerily named ‘A lake tour’. We went up to Gull Lake then Upper Gull Lake and then past Junction Valley which has a gorge in it which is just crying out for a session of gorge walking. We then walked up the edge of Hesttesletten and up to the Hamburg Lakes which were truly lovely, all the way up to Upper Hamburg lake which was milky from the silt released into it by the hanging Hamburg Glacier.

The Hamburg lake and glacier

Infinity ...

 It was a wonderful day but the tramp home across the Hesttesletten was a very long one. It looks much shorter than it really is but this is the longest flat bit on the whole island and one forgets how boring walking on flat can be. We came home to Sue’s wonderful French night where we had cheese soufflé, duck a l’orange and a lemony, spongy pudding. We also wore fancy dress from the neck up. It was a lovely night and all that was missing was Paula and Jo. 

On Sunday afternoon we picked them up from Sorling, after they walked the 7 hours from St Andrews. Unfortunately it was a day earlier than planned because the weather is meant to deteriorate rapidly tonight with 40kt winds and a blizzard, probably, until Thursday. Winter really is on its way. Let’s hope the next blog I send has photos of snow.