South Island Saga continued: Sailors

 As a kid, I read a great many sea stories.  The Old Man and the Sea, by Hemingway, Moby Dick, by Melville, Two Years before the Mast, by R. H. Dana, Jr., The Log from the Sea of Cortez, by one of my favorite authors, John Steinbeck, Kon Tiki, by Thor Heyerdahl, and many others.  

Because of this early interest and immersion (no pun intended) in all things nautical, you might suppose that I grew into a competent sailor. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is true that with age, I have grown into quite a corpulent sailor, if by sailor you mean 'one who staggers his way around tour boats, resolutely trying to focus his camera on passing marine scenes of interest against the pitching, rolling, heaving, swaying, and surging that boats are fond of doing, especially when land-lubbers are aboard, which is almost always.'  

Fortunately for me, and for this photographic record, I did eventually find my sea legs. My Sea Legs are an over-the-counter product that comes in a bottle of 12 tablets and provide the child over six years of age who ingests one of them, or the adult who doubles that dosage, with 24 hours of relief from the effects of the pitching, rolling, heaving, etc. They didn't stop me from staggering around the moving deck, but they did prevent me from hanging over the side looking green. It makes all the difference. With them I can weather the storm; without them, our four-hour cruise may have seemed like at least two years before the mast to me.   

Needless to say, on the morning before our cruise through the harbor and out into the Pacific, I had followed the directions on the bottle's label and had swallowed a pair of what I considered to be life-savers. These were much more likely to benefit me I thought than the bright orange floatation devices than the Monarch, by law, was required to have for each person on board.  

I thought that I should tell you all this before you look at the next series of pictures. Some of them were taken while under the influence of the Pacific Ocean, which, as we approached it, made sure I knew who, or rather what, was in charge.  One or two of these shots is not quite as clear as I would have liked, but that is because this photographer was hanging on to his seat on the edge of a pitching, rolling, etc., boat with his knees and trying to snap the button on his camera as the intended object pitched into view and before it rolled out again.   

Fortunately for you, you will see only the moment of the photograph. You won't see the up, down, and sideways scenes that precede and follow each of the shots I'll share. If you did, you might also need a dose of something preventative before proceeding. Nor will you see the photos I snapped there were composed of all sky, all waves, or my fellow passenger's left ear.  I discarded those.  

This is a colony of gannets.  We have also seen these on Muriwai Beach near Auckland.

A closer look. 

What you see here on this hillside, are the last few Royal Albatross chicks remaining from the colony.  Talk about a terrible childhood.  When their biological clock tells them to, and when the winds are strong enough to assist them into the air, these chicks will take wing, head out to sea, and spend the next several years living alone, above and on it, as they hunt for squid, their preferred prey, and fish, a close runner-up.  

They seem small at a distance, but these 'chicks' are massive. The females average just over eight kilos, (17.6 lbs.) and and some males can reach about 12 kilos, (26.4 lbs.).  Those are the size of really, really big turkeys up there, and ones that will have an adult wingspan of 2.9 to 3.3 meters, (9.5 to 10.8 feet)  

The adults have abandoned them. They stopped feeding them, apparently to induce them to leave the nest. If they do not, they will starve. Because of their size, they need a wind speed of at least 16 meters per second (almost 36 miles per hour) to become airborne.  

In The Rime* of the Ancient Mariner, by Samuel Coleridge, a sailor's killing of an albatross brings bad luck upon the ship and his shipmates retaliate against him by hanging the dead bird around his neck. Can you imagine that?  

The headlands and lighthouse. This is where the sea got rougher. 

More fur seals

Some impressive cliffs here, and take a look at the long coats that were provided by the Monarch against the elements.  They were much appreciated.  

It's amazing to me that the seals can haul themselves up there.  

We're on our way back in and I admire a cave I hadn't noticed on the way out.  Note that the color of the water is starting to show a bit of sun again. 

BTW, Jeanne reminded me that this cave, we were told, is where one can sometimes see little blue penguins. Unfortunately for us, they generally prefer to come out into the light of day during the dark of the night. We didn't see any with reverse insomnia.  

Ah, this is the sort of water surface this sailor prefers. 

Actually, the trip through the harbor was very smooth. It was only when we were in the ocean that I felt the waves, and then, mainly because I had my camera on zoom and that emphasized the effects of the waves.  If you look at the photos, the ocean wasn't really all that rough.   

Such scenery.  We passed this hill not long before we stopped briefly at Carey's Bay Hotel and picked up box lunches of fish and chips which we ate aboard the Monarch. I have to say, they were among the best f & c's I can ever remember eating. They were still hot; the coating crisp on the fish, good salty chips and tangy tartare sauce.  Maybe it was the liberal dose of sea air which especially fueled my appetite.  

We then returned to the wharf, our expedition complete.  

(Home is the Sailor, home from the sea: a line from Requiem, by Robert Louis Stevenson) 

The chemicals within the Sea Legs, still coursing through my veins and arteries for at least another 14 hours, could relax, a job well done and their services no longer required. 

If you know anything at all about sailors, you know that we, as a rule, waste no time, having made port, in finding the nearest tavern, where we slake the thirst that sailing past gannets, albatrosses and seals can produce.  

Similarly, our group of hearties, swaying slightly to compensate for the ground beneath them remaining fixed, made our way into the happy hour facilities provided by our hotel, where tall, cold, nutritious beverages healed mind and body from the effects of wind and waves.  

(I did notice that some of our sailors had a harder time than others adjusting to being on land again. They clearly still felt the motions of the boat and were swaying as they walked, even more noticeably, after happy hour. Just one of those sailor things, I suppose.)  

The next morning, we were up and at it again, a long bus journey down to Invercargill anticipated.  Our first rest stop was along this beach, and looking out at the breaking waves, we could see that the winds were rising.  We might be in for it later.  

I'll stop here for this week.  I hope you've enjoyed the scenery so far.  Much, much more to come.  -djf

*-Rime  

I thought that I should explain this word. It's not a misspelling. 

It sounds like the word rhyme of course, which you might expect since The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a poem.

Rime however, means a kind of frost that can form on the sides of ships in cold fog and wind. It can also be salty due to the spray.  

What an interesting title, huh?  Just goes to show that Coleridge knew his stuff.