She rolls and rolls approaching to South Georgia. A taste of the Furious 50s.
A day of wild waves. A day of strong following winds.
But where, after all, would be the poetry of the sea were there no wild waves?
- Joshua Slocum. Sailing around the World
She heavily rolls and rolls, running the seas and the weather. From Port to Starboard and then again, she takes water over both sides of her main deck. And that lasts for most of the journey, until the evening.
Every movement, every stride requires attention, where to step next, what to grab. Just getting off the bunk takes a while. A bunk that has seen us awake and bumping ourselves from side to side for the last handful of hours. Next would be to get dressed. And it is cold and wet outside, so better do it well. But… Where’s the sock? Maybe the thermal shirt flew straight to the opposite side of the cabin? What about those wet boots… will I be able to find them before my watch starts? It is maybe time for a meal?
And then, making our way to the galley or the buffet tables, we always have a good surprise. Now a treat, then a snack, a tasty main course, and no matter the seas, the heeling, pitching or rolling, always a good hot soup for lunch. Different, varied tempting dishes for every day, and without exception every day many queue for seconds.
Although we can’t compare our ways, our doings and our trips abroad EUROPA with the modern cruise-tourist-expedition vessels, we still breathe from a different universe than the living conditions experienced by Shackleton, Worsley and their men when they sailed these very same waters and same route aboard the James Caird in April 1916.
The principal article of our diet was a mixture that looked like a dark brown brick, which consisted of beef protein, lard, oatmeal, sugar and salt. This was cooked over the Primus to a thick mixture resembling pea-soup. Every four hours in the daytime we had a meal of this, which we took scalding hot. Sometimes after this “hooch”, as Shackleton called it, we would have a half-pound block of Streimer’s Nut Food, a food of the nougat type, extremely sweet, which however, never cloyed our appetites down there.
Frank Woosley. From: Shackleton’s Boat Journey. The Story of the James Caircd. Harding Mc Gregor Dunnet.
Neither matter that the rig is frozen, decks are slippery and she takes wild rolls, crew climbs aloft, furl sails and continue jobs on deck and down below. Out at the wheel, a pair of hands steer the ship, with a focused stare at the compass; lookouts try to see something through the falling snow.
And indeed, something is spotted in the water close to the ship. Quite an unusual sighting here, a Sperm whale. Rare in this region, sometimes solitary males venture this further south, visiting then continental shelf edges and sea canyons.
Indeed a quite similar area than where we find ourselves today, when we just crossed the 200nm line of the territorial waters and the Marine Protected Area around South Georgia.
