Auckland Islands: Aucklands part 1

Aucklands part 1

Posted by Ferg on 1/12/2002, 11:31 pm

THE WORLD IS NOT FLAT AND I HAVE NOT FALLEN OFF THE EDGE!
Each trip to the Aucklands is wonderful, and each different. I have found that with each trip as my familiarity grows with these fascinating sub-antarctic islands, I learn more and appreciate the subtleties of them more and more.
cont.
This was my third trip with Lance Shaw of Fiordland Ecology Holidays (http://www.fiordland.gen.nz)
- and second on the Breaksea Girl, a 64 foot motor sailer. We set sail on Nov. 13th, on a magnificent sunny day - quite different from our first trip down on the Evohe when the night before there was an angry orange/black sunset and high winds.
We sailed down the long coast of Stewart Island, getting to know each other. A wonderful group on board including Cynthia Cass, the N.Z. artist whose grandmother and her sisters were the first women (as girls) to visit the sub-antarctic islands in the early 1900s on the Hinemoa.
To get myself back into the mood for writing (have been so frustrated the past year with A BOOK TO WRITE and not able to get down to it), I would sit for an hour or so on the stern, pencil gripped in chilly fingers and just write.
Wed morning: "The pitching is just beginning - the ship coming alive as she heads southward. The odd flying horse but not yet a herd! Spume from the bow wave rolling back and out and out. Dark sky - low clouds blanketing the wooded hills of Stewart Island. The highway of history that we are following! James Clark Ross, the Erebus and Terror, Shackleton, the Porpoise, D'Urville, the Hinemoa, - the sea chants their names. Taking on a real roll now - and pitching - those of faint stomach will be heading below soon."
My project this time was to finish the site survey of the Hardwicke Settlement. I did the more known part four years ago, but because of weather we were held up for three days at Pegasus on Stewart Is. so did not have time to complete it. I had one of our Ouareau senior staff members with me - Bronwyn Pavey. She was in NZ on an exchange at the University of Otago in Dunedin, in Marine Biology and her term finished just before we left. She was a tremendous help, and great fun to have aboard.
We punched down in a Southerly and it was really safer simply to stay in one's bunk! I am fortunate that I am quite comfortable aboard ship in any weather, so got a lot of reading done - and relaxing and sleeping.
"No longer a question of describing great flowing waves - we are now rising and slipping and pitching. Great spumes of grey aquamarine billowing outward as we plow forward. First Albatross! Waves no longer smooth - wave upon wave - the horses are galloping. How many ways to describe a wave - how to describe the colour - as close to black as I have seen. Now holding on to the winch as I write. The sounds- engine now has died into a familiar guttural steady hum which we will not notice unless it should stop."
cont....