After the heavy start of the trip and the sailing, the weather and sea conditions now look much better. The sustained forceful winds from the beginning of our trip and all along the day didn’t look very promising for a landfall today. But after finding a relatively sheltered anchorage at Low Bay, we could all hear the engines start and the anchor being heaved home in the early morning to make way to the northern shores of Bleaker Island, a move indicating that the Captain and Mate have considered good chances for trying to land there after breakfast.
If very windy, the lowlands of the island offer scarce protection, but after scouting the situation and despite the bay being swept by a bit of low swell, a spot on the long sandy beach that is usually used for landings was found to be suitable to put us ashore.
Map in hand, we can see that we are now on a long and narrow island, a shape that gave it the original name (Long Island). Nowadays, the name has changed to Bleaker, a corruption of "Breaker Island" due to the waves that usually break on it. Shallows and breakers represented quite a hazard for navigation, and as a witness to it, there are several shipwrecks around it. The Cassard, a French steel barque built in 1899, was bound from Sydney to Cardiff with a cargo of grain when she was wrecked at the southern point of the island in July 1906. During the next 20 years, another four ships were lost here.
Bleaker Island is one of the many that are managed and farmed, combining conservation-scientific projects and grazing surfaces.
Meadows and low hills are mostly grazed by sheep herds and cattle, a nice smooth surface to walk on. The fenced protected areas are where healthy tussock grass thrives. That gave us an idea about the look of the whole island in the past before the introduction of the farming economy, probably around the same time when sealers and whalers regularly visited the island for their hunting and rendering fat into the most appreciated oil.
Nowadays, people coming here do so by small plane or cruise ships, attracted by the solitude, interesting nature, wildlife, and fabulous landscapes.
And so we went on our morning exploration. At the beach, we all met the couple that runs the farm. Eager to pay a visit to the ship, they were brought aboard while we enjoyed a couple of hours ashore.
A leisurely hike over grazed fields where many Upland and Ruddy-headed geese walk around with their chicks and Magellanic penguins guard the entrance of their burrows, we made our way towards a Rockhopper penguin rookery. Perched above a cliff, as they usually like to do, here they share the space with Imperial shags. Both species are incubating their eggs now. As a curiosity, the Rockhoppers usually lay two of them, a larger and a usually unviable smaller one; here and there, when they stand up from their nests, both are clearly visible. A task that always keeps all those birds busy during the breeding season is to keep building, refurbishing, and improving their nests, and often we can see them carrying weeds or kelp for that purpose.
Just a short walk away from the rookery, an impressive Imperial shag colony. Thousands of them nest tightly packed over the flats. So many birds nesting one next to the other, of course, attract the attention of predators and other opportunistic birds such as Skuas, Giant petrels, Dolphin, and Brown-hooded gulls, which can be counted in large numbers around the cormorants, waiting and searching for a chance to get an egg or a chick.
The afternoon ahead was about to be a different one. Relatively sheltered from the persistent and quite strong northerly winds that blow out at sea, the idea was to spend some time here and finish the instructions and familiarization that started yesterday before hitting the rough weather. Soon we gathered on deck for an exciting familiarization to climb the rig. Harnesses donned, lanyards ready, and after carefully listening to the coaching by the crew, up the shrouds we went to the first platform. Different people with different levels of success, though, but nevertheless a thrilling experience for all. Many will surely repeat soon, further learning how to give a hand to the crew furling and unfurling sails. Training didn’t have to wait long, as in the late evening, some helped the permanent crew up the yards to pack away the sails that we used during the afternoon sail. Straight away after finishing these climbing instructions, the anchor came home, and we started setting canvas on our way towards the next destination, Barren Island.
Top sails first, Lower and Middle staysails, Top Gallants, and all headrig, then Royals and Upper Staysails. Soon we were on our way with all these sails set. Conditions have been abating, seas flattening, and wind steadying under the 30 knots and dying down. We kept the canvas set until dusk, when all sails were clewed up or pulled down on their downhauls. To turn eastwards and head towards Barren Island, close to the southeastern tip of the Falklands, the Europa had to face the wind, so engine work would have to do until late at night when she dropped anchor in a good location for tomorrow’s landing attempt.