Motoring against the wind on an east by north course.
Variable weather and passing squalls. We wake up to a ship where all her sails had been doused already yesterday, and been furled during the night. Today will be a day to use our engines to make some progress against the easterly wind.
And with the wind picking up, more seabirds seem to join us on our progress. They too need the wind to glide and fly, preferring to sit and wait during calm conditions. White-chinned petrels join their cousins, the Spectacled, in following the ship. The small but brave Wilson's storm petrels flutter their small wings over the waves. The exceptional travellers, Great shearwaters, are around too. But today it was a journey for several juvenile individuals of a few albatross species. We know well by now the Yellow-nosed, which use the Tristan Archipelago as their nesting sites. We have also seen many of the Black-browed, with a much wider distribution along the Southern Ocean. But today we were surprised to spot yet another species, which we haven’t seen during our trip and is not a common sight in these waters — what we identify as a possible Tasmanian albatross. With their nesting grounds off Tasmania, they disperse in the Southern Ocean all the way west to South Africa and Namibia. Noticeably larger than the Black-browed and Yellow-nosed, they belong to the group of the Shy albatrosses, which includes four species. Even though all of them can spread out at sea along the South Pacific and Indian Oceans, their regular nesting places are in the South Pacific, from New Zealand and Tasmania to some of the remotest islands that pepper the southern parts of this ocean.
Birdwatching — an interesting activity on a day like today, with many birds around and with not much sail handling. Actually, just once we braced around and set a couple of the lower staysails. So it is a good time too for lectures, a bit of pull-up exercises, reading a book, studying the lines and their locations on the pinrails, maintenance projects, and preparations for the upcoming shipyard period in Namibia. Activities that can be easily done today even if the seas are steeper than yesterday, probably effects of wind blowing against current, and the skies show menacing squalls left, right, in front and back. None of them is big, none brought sudden blasts, but they are loaded with moisture and drizzle.
We sail around 35ºS, where it is frequent that clouds and showers grow. It is a region that lies between the predominant westerlies that we all know well from further south, and the characteristic Subtropical High Pressure System, usually located slightly north of us.
The colder air masses that so far we have been riding for the whole of our trip have been travelling for long distances over the sea surface, and here clash with those of the subtropical high — dry and warm. Where we find ourselves these days, on the southern side of these high-pressure weather systems, plus in waters that reach 20ºC while the air is slightly cooler at 19.5ºC, frontal activity can easily pick up.
