Kerguelen glimpses part 3 or whatever...

First, you need to know that in Kerguelen, and probably all over France, they drink their breakfast coffee out of pudding bowls - half litre size. Second, conventional table manners are for the conventional. It's fair go to mix whatever you like in your coffee - cornflakes, cream, honey, sugar, the works. Scene at breakfast this morning - my lean, hook nosed hollow cheeked scrubby bearded friend who, with a bandanna would be perfectly cast in "Pirates 4" or whichever mixes a devils mix of black coffee, honey, milk, sugar and cream in his bowl - looks like baby poo by the time he has finished. Then he cuts a foot long length of bread from a french stick, slices it in two lengthwise, smears in in butter until every last square millimetre is covered. Then he spreads Nutella (for the uninitiated, a sort of soft chocolatey spread based on hazel nuts) all over it with the same concentrated care. Then, with enormous relish, he dips one end of a slice into his poo coloured coffee bowl just long enough to soak it but before it goes completely mushy and loses its structural integrity - and bites off the end, wipes the dribbles off his chin with great delicacy and repeats until all gone. Wonderful - I must try it when we get home.

And the eerie. I went for a walk this morning while we were waiting to be ferried out to Berri and visited the chapel. It's rigged inside just like a catholic one, but it is accepted simply as a place where people can go to commune in their own private way. Poignant memorials inside, some very personal. Outside, about 50 yards away, there is a lovely statue of Our Lady of the Winds. Under the pillars that form the arch of the porch there's an old blackened bronze bell with a short braided rope attached to the clapper. The bell swings in the wind and the clapper grates on the ring it hangs from inside the bell. I was looking from the arch to the statue and the bell started to grate and resonate - perfect movie SFX for the spirits of the dead - the ghost of the Ancient Mariner at my elbow.

Seals - they are everywhere, lying around in gross floppy heaps, some moulting, which makes then really ugly - they bark and the elephant seals snort. And they get around by undulating their bodies from front to back and pushing with their tails. But only 10 metres or so at a time and then they expire with a massive exhalation into a flaccid heap and rest for a couple of minutes. The King penguins are just finishing their moult - some are still scraggly but the rest are sleek and beautiful.

Prions, Cape Petrels, a couple of Skuas and a big albatross, Kerguelen a hard crenellated edge 10 miles away in the haze and advancing cloud around the setting sun.

And we're pointing at Australia.

More later.

On the way

Departed Port aux Francais 0800 UTC january 28th 3123 miles to Maatsuuyker. I will use this for DMG until we get there...

Hooning in 25 kt westerly - just leaving the Baie du Morbihan.

More later

from Gerant postal Kerguelen

Tomorrow...

The admiralty chart has notations all over it for magnetic anomalies. I'm not surprised - even the grit here is magnetic. I go outside with laptop and satphone to send these posts, shivering in the cold breeze and I have the satphone aerial extension fitted to the thing. The antenna on the end of the cable has a magnet underneath it (for attaching to the roof of yer ruggedized 4WD as you barge down the highway from Chatswood to do the weekend shopping...) and I sit on a rock outside the demountable and put the antenna on the black, gritty ground and when I have finished, there is a little crown of tiny black pebbles attached to the circular magnet. Good fun. Apparently there are places where even the GPS gets the habdabs although I don't see how it can happen.

We hope leave tomorrow, restocked with assorted goodies and, with luck, 25 - 30 days to Hobart. The plan is to stop in Hobart for a few days, slip Berri, change the prop and fix any glitches and put on some antifoul and a bit of polish and varnish - should be back in Sydney, DV etc, end Feb, early March. For the initiated, I hope to reinstate the Bash this year, date TBF, and if we make it in one piece, there will be a homecoming party in the park. However, predictions are dangerous and serve only to provoke the Examiner, so this is just the first wash on the canvas.

Today, I will spend the morning repacking the disaster that is Berri's interior and then we will start putting all the gear we have ashore back on board.

More later. Berri seems in good nick. Forecast for tomorrow is ok but for Friday, distinctly pearshaped. We'll leave and head north to give ourselves some room and to get as close to the top of the low as possible. Big high to the east if we can get across to it.

Envelopes part 2

Doing envelopes most of today.
For those who asked for one on the blog and for my family, this is what they will look like - suggest you print this because they won't arrive until the end of April. I hope we beat them back to Oz!
FRONT: Photo of Berrimilla with bow of L'Aventure in the background. Photo and envelopes courtesy M. Renaud Huez, interesting man of many parts, now the Postmaster here for a year, who set all this up for us.
Personal rubber stamp of Renaud Huez,
Two postage stamps - one of de Rochegude (as an Admiral) who first landed, with great difficulty, at Baie de L'Oiseau. The other of Charles Rouillon - much later but very eminent explorer - google him - just to keep a historical perspective. Stamps cancelled with special postmark.
Pete's and my signatures.
BACK: Official (rubber) stamps for L'Aventure, CNES - the Centre National des Explorations Spatiales and Meteo France, the French Bureau of Meteorology. CNES and MF provide most of the funding for this District. The CNES stamp was badly worn and the image is a bit indistinct.

Pete's envelopes are for his family and friends. They may be different. The choice of postage and rubber stamps is bewildering!

Sue, you got in by special dispensation. Too difficult to take pic of El Pinkathingykerg - huge wind and just too busy surviving to set it up. Will try tomoz when wind abates.

64 knots last night - elephant seals crashing earthwards all over the place, rather like the HGTTG whale, poor thing.

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Envelopes

0300 UTC and I've finished addressing my quota of envelopes - sorry if you did not get in in time! For those who did, they should arrive some time in April, DV & WP.

Berri still attached to her mooring, with elephant seals flashing by in the wind. On my way out in the RIB to inspect and tidy her up a it.

More later.

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Correction to my last

Muggins aka Dozy Old Fart got it wrong - my French is way far from perfect. The next ship arrives here in March, (mars, not mardi...) so the envelopes will not leave until then and you won't get them until April. Also, I do not want to impose on the generosity of Son Eminence le Maitre de Poste so no more addresses after today please. I have two more envelopes above the list already received so first come...

Wonderful day today shuttling researchers in and out of the remote outpost stations around the hundred or so islands in the Baie du Morbihan. We called at Haute, St.Malo, Mayes, Guillou and Verte and on the way back to Port aux Francais, passed the wreck of a previous ship, which is actually marked on my chart. At Guillou, we were about 15 miles from Mt Ross, the highest point on the island. Lots of photos. Stark volcanic landscape, eroded by water freezing in the cracks and breaking off the outer layers, exposing the strata and blurring the crystalline rock forms down the millions of years. Also huge runoffs after the rain and occasional snow. Penguins, seals and dolphins (type to follow - I will ask later, but blunt nosed with white sides). My Gold Collared albatross was probably an immature Snowy and I am extremely doubtful that my 'Amsterdam' was indeed such - more likely a juvenile Snowy, NZ or Tristan. There are people here who really know about these things. Projects today - the effect of introduced species, rabbits, cats, rats and sheep; Blue Petrels and their environment and reproductive cycles; invasive species - aphids and other insects, which are all vectors for viruses; the effects of atmospheric pollution - several others but that's the sort of thing. They stay out in the field for three to ten days in insulated cabins, but they are all rigged and equipped to walk and to survive for longer if the weather changes. L'Adventure is an 80 ton barge about the size of one a half tennis courts with two big diesels and hydraulic propellors on stocks that can be turned so no need for rudders, and they can be raised out of the water. The barge just drives up to a beach or a rocky headland. parks its square flat nose against the solid earth and Frank, the skipper, holds it there with his engines as the teams transfer their equipment and themselves. No fuss, all done with cool competence and flair. The people - carefully selected volunteers - all with personality, verve, knowledge and dedication. Some students doing field projects - what an opportunity!

Wind gradually rising all day - averaging 45 kt on the way back. Now seems to be abating. The wind and the defined static lenticular clouds and the flying cascades of spray added to the stark landscape but I will never be able to see these islands as the desolate spot the early explorers and pioneers described - it has life, bleak beauty, rapid change from glorious to menacing in minutes. A character of its very own. A real privilege to be here and to see it all and to take part.

When we arrived back in Port aux Francais, we were greeted by Mme Deschamps, the Chef du District. She came down to the quay in the wind and rain specially to meet us and then took us to her house for coffee. Tomorrow she will stamp our passports.

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Last chance

Amazing day today. Now blowing elephant seals off the rocks - poor Berri straining at her mooring, everything slatting.

Will do full blog later but if you want a commemorative envelope, this is your last chance. I think I can guarantee one for everyone who has replied so far - just a bit overwhelmed by the response - but from early AM tuesday UTC (so 1100 ish in Sydney, no guarantee but I'll do my best. Many of you have asked how you might contribute - a small donation to the iridium fund via my sister Isabella would be appreciated - if you email her at isabella.msw at homecall.co.uk (remove the spaces and substitute the @ where necessary...)she will tell you how to send it and she has access to my iridium account. If no can do, no problem!

H,K & E, have you on the list, also Fiona (massive thanks!)

SW, thanks also for forwarding.

Apologies Izz - hope it's ok! Tks for addresses yesterday.

Super quickie

Have we ever been lucky - so far - we got in at just the right time - glorious weather for three days including Baie de L'Oiseau and tomorrow it blows - 60 knots forecast. Poor Berri tied by long, heavy plaited lint to mooring buoy with the line looped round both foredeck cleats and on to itself, bridle strops back to main winches, eerything tied down, 2 lashings on the furled headsail and we cross the fingere it will be ok. Not a lot we can do if not, so we're going off around the Baie for the trip of a lifetime from 0600, returning about 11 hours later when the wind is forecast to come in.

A seal wobbled past my window today - 300 metres up the hill from the water. I have video to prove it. Smashing day all round.

Amazing place - I wish I could spend a year here with a laptop and a couple of cameras.

Doug, I've given all your papers and the Dagelet article to Renaud Huez - long story - who will understand them and make them available here. He will contact you but please send me your email address asap if you read this.

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Glimpse part 2

There's an easy discipline to this place which I recognise and love - I grew up with it in a different world. It's based on acceptance of a set of basic and common assumptions, a shared and universal trust in the competence and professionalism of others and an (always somewhat tentative) confidence in one's own ability to take part. It is easy to see these people as the same people who sailed with Diaz, with Kerguelen, DuFresne, de Rosnevet, Cook, Ross, Crozier and all the others. Kings Regulations and Admiralty Instructions or the Inquisition were always menacingly in the background - surfacing occasionally to create fear and consternation (Voltaire's acid remark that the English found it necessary on occasion to shoot an Admiral 'pour encourager les autres')- but mostly intrepid and courageous men, usually but not always volunteers, who were out here because it gave them a living. No more than that. There were, of course, the others, the leaders like Kerguelen perhaps, whose ambition drove them to excess. And the obsessives - Amundsen perhaps.

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Port aux Francais part 2 - a glimpse

What an interesting place - physically, environmentally, culturally, historically. Thanks to Doug's papers, I know about as much of the history as the locals. They spend one year here - two month handover overlap between 'missions' a bit like the ISS crews - research projects continue but personnel change. There is a tracking facility for satellites with a telemetry download process and a meteorological station with the usual internet access and an atmospheric balloon launch every day to monitor the upper atmosphere.

A tomb outside the non denominational church with the tombstone written in arabic. Also a plain wooden cross, weathered and grey - in memory of someone who died at sea - memorial plaques to people from many countries inside - poignant indicators of the international and cosmopolitan tide of the place.

Perhaps it's typically French and a spin off from the extreme professionalism and respect between the people here but you handshake when you meet someone anywhere for the first time during the day if he's male, double cheek kiss for female - it's expected and a sort of formal ritual. There's a lot of it going on at breakfast! And there's a genuine Boulanger - yay! Fresh bread, chocolate cake par excellence, croissants, palmiers, the lot. French wine if required.

Tomorrow, we hope to be allowed to sail on MV Aventure around the islands of the Baie du Morbihan doing the weekly delivery run to the many outposts and research sites. Requires permission from the Chef du Mission, who is in the field till tomorrow.

1800 or so sheep on the island left over from one of the farming projects - we had one for lunch yesterday! And there are rainbow trout in the rivers - wild after an aborted attempt to farm them in the 1920's - Anne-Claire, one of the Doctors, leaves on Wednesday for Reunion at the end of her year here and she has gone trout fishing up there in the hills with the scientist who runs the toothfish project - and who was at Macquarie University in Australia studying Lungfish. But he should know how to catch a trout!

There's a wonderful documentary lurking out here - the place, the history, the wildlife, the people, the projects - I'd love to do it! There is a lovely uncluttered thread from the past that lives and breathes and evolves here - just like the settlements in the North West Passage, particularly Cambridge Bay which is strikingly similar.

More if I can - these posts depend on my sitting outside with the laptop and the satphone - local internet is way too clunky and we don't get much chance to use it anyway.

Must have all snailmail addresses in by Monday evening local so that I have time to catch the outgoing ship on Wednesday with the letters. Again, no promises but I'll do my best.

Ivan, lots of photos of Baie de L-Oiseau. We did not land - decided to leave in the weather window. There's still a scattered pile of stones on the little headland where the bottle was left - the remains of Cook' cairn perhaps? And I bet de Rochegude's buried bottle is still there somewhere. I know how it might be possible to find it too.

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Port Aux Francais (population 60 + 2)

Somewhere south of the middle of nowhere! Cool. Click to enlarge, not that there is much more to see!

Port aux Francais

Arrived around 0800 UTC - Berri on a mooring 50 metres from the jetty and we are up in the settlement being rather well lokked after. Settlement just like an Austalian mining camp - demountable buildings for acommodation, communal eating, movies - the works. The Postmaster - selected for his knowledge of philately as well as general soundness of mind - is going to do a special edition envelope commemorating our visit - if you want one posted to you with Kerguelen TAAF stamp, I need snail mail addresses urgently. No promises but I'll do my best.
Norml internet access almost impossible so will go outside into the cold cold wind with the laptop and the satphone and try to send this.
After whch, totally knackered and gong to bed. Saha! Seals and penguins not far from window.

Tentative yeeehaaa and wooohooo.

More or less parked off the NE corner of the island - to get into Baie du Morbihan and Port aux Francais, we have to sail a big circle - radius about 25 miles - from the NW to the SE and then NW into the Baie. Another series of waypoints transferred from paper to digital. We have almost no wind after copping 30 kts for a lot of the day and making huge progress. The Examiner is back from her holiday. We left L'Oiseau to try to get to P a F in the short window between fronts. The one behind us has speeded up and will arrive around 0900 utc so we have about 12 hours to sail about 40 miles - too risky to use the engine at night with all the kelp around but should be ok after first light when we have some chance of seeing the stuff. The next one after that, in about 48 hours, has 50 knots in it.

The silence of another lovely, hazy starry night cut by Berri's thumping and banging in the gentle swell and the sounds of the birds around us. There's one that makes a noise like a road rage car horn, then the usual grrooaaks and phnaaarks (albatrosses, I think) and squeaks. I see them occasionally in the dim reflected light from Berri's masthead light - fleeting wraiths in the gloom.

Several hours later - I think we cracked it. Ain't we been lucky?? We have just entered Baie du Morbihan with about 12 miles to P a F. Misty sunshine, Kelp! You think you've seen seaweed? We snuck in through a narrow channel on the chart, saving about an hour, between huge forests of the stuff covering perhaps 500 metres square - and then there's all the loose mats that must be spotted and avoided. Berri's well travelled Q flag flying but haven't got a French Southern Territories courtesy flag. That would be one for the collection! If, of course, they let us land. Watch this space.

old style navigation

click on graphic to enlarge....

Passe de la Resolution

Position 0630 22nd. 4848 06923 trip 18. In the Passe de la Resolution with plotter and pencil. I'm at the nav table, Pete on deck and it's watch on, stop on. Nice breeze, 18 - 20 up the chuff so lovely sailing - just have to keep serious loookout for kelp - at least twice the boat length, several times as wide and densely tangled. We are trying to follow the deepest part of the Passe but the chart is very vague - not a lot of survey work along here so interesting. Hoping to be off Cape Digby by nightfall then depending on wx, perhaps another heave to in preparation for the last 40 miles or so into Baie du Morbihan. Hope they let us stop alongside and land. Cross em please.

Very quick update

Departed Baie de L'Oiseau 0215 utc heading for Port aux Francais. Alternative was to wait for the next big blow with 40 kts in it and perhaps stuck there indefinitely.

Major problem with kelp everywhere - trying to stay in deep water. Half an hour of furious work with chart, plotter and pencil transferring a string of waypoints to the computer - Cook had the same problem but he did not have a chart and sent Discovery ahead to find a way through.

Bright sunlight again - snow on Presqu'ile de la Societe de Geographie and Cook Glacier just visible behind it. We could not have picked a better day - so far!

Could be a long day - we both have to stay awake but opportunities between waypoints for one or other to grab half an hour if we get lucky.

Something very special.

What a day. Pure, gold plated magic. It's about midnight local time and I've been sitting out in the cockpit on anchor watch wearing my Dutch Harbour Mustang Flote Coat - padded for buoyancy and warm - lined industrial gloves, also from Dutch, fleecy salopettes and brown fisherman's boots - Dutch again and Dutch fleece balaclava. A still, cold, brilliant starry night in this huge rather menacing amphitheatre dominated by the great black lava face to the south and what looks like a classic volcanic plug to the north. Orion to the north west, the Cross to the south and the cascading slash of the Milky Way a luminous bridge between them across my bit of sky. The smell - penguin rookery and seals upwind, earthy and pungent - the snorting roars of elephant seals echoing around the auditorium, sharper barks of something much smaller and the arky squeaky of the King Penguins in cacophony in the background. The calls of other birds - cormorants, petrels and big brown seabirds that I could not identify. A watch with a difference - one I will remember when things get pearshaped.

Earlier, I saw a mother seal up on the mossy slope above the promontory where de Rochegude left his bottle. She had two biggish pups and was chasing them around. Penguins swimming around the boat and what sounded like fish sucking the growth from Berri's bottom. A seal somewhere close.

I guess it can't last - we have been so lucky to arrive on one of what must be very few cloudless days - weirdly unbelievable that we are here at all. The reports I have read talk of the bleak, desolate dreariness of the place but I don't think I will ever be able to think of it that way. Soft northerly at the moment, due to turn westerly and the usual blast later tonight or tomorrow morning with another bigger one to follow. But we cracked today. Yeeehaaa!

Next morning - while I was writing all that, the cloud rolled in, the stars disappeared and the wind came up. Three hours in a loverly warm sleeping bag later and I'm up again and shivering. But it's still bleakly beautiful! The sun has risen directly behind the two huge pillars of the collapsed arch at the entrance to the harbour putting them in silhouette - filtered light through the low overcast. We are hoping our single anchor will hold in the 35 knots forecast for the next 24-36 hours - will have to lay the second one if it looks iffy. The NW winds blow directly over the saddle at the western end of the harbour and funnel down between the high sides.

Eerie echoes

Other uncanny reflections of the past - Doug Morrison sent me a sheaf of papers from his research into the French and other explorers, amongst which were James Clark Ross' chart and soundings for the Baie, possibly compiled by Francis Crozier. I used this to find the spot to anchor. There were also detailed drawings from out to sea of the entrance and the arch, now collapsed, by R Benard (I think - can't read Doug's writing) published in 1784. Benard was with Cook. I used them to identify the entrance from 5 miles out. I could not read the photocopy of his soundings chart so I used Ross'.

There was also an engraving of the harbour in Ross' account, showing Erebus and Terror at anchor, one of them almost in the same position as we are now. They too went to the NW passage with Franklin ten years or so later and they are still there, somewhere off King William Island with the bones of their crews. We felt the presence of their ghosts up there, particularly in Simpson Strait. I never imagined we'd meet them again, let alone here, almost at the opposite end of the planet.

Wonderful to have it all with us, Doug. Thanks!

When we set off from Cape Town, I thought that Kerguelen might be a bridge too far. Boneheadedness sometimes wins out. So, a Talisker this evening, courtesy of Pete Goss.

More tomorrow.

Baie de L'Oiseau

Impossible to convey the thrill, the absolute delight, the quiet satisfaction - here we are, anchored in Baie de L'Oiseau, 236 years after Ensign de Rochegude landed here from L'Oiseau and claimed the place for the French and left his message sealed in a quart bottle which Cook's men found 3 years later and Cook replaced with his own added message. We are anchored opposite the little headland where that bottle was found and replaced. Brilliant sunshine, powder blue water, kelp patches, king penguins and seals on the beach about 500 metres away and the sounds of the penguins at least just like the Falklands. Seabirds - cormorants and other divers, Lovely Cape Petrels escorting us in. Last 15 miles on the wind in 25 knots and rising sea - interesting! Cape Petrels all the way! Worth every little thump of the headbang getting here from Cape Town. We have been lucky, once again but the plan worked perfectly and, for once, the Examiner was looking the other way. Spellbinding! Once in a lifetime exhilaration - more immediate than sailing out of the NW passage but comparable to Cape Horn.

I wonder how many other vessels have anchored here since de Rochegude. Far more than made the NW Passage although up there, the whaling ships in the Bering Strait, Chukchi and Beaufort seas must have numbered in the thousands on the western approach to Amundsen Gulf. And on the subject of Amundsen: From Malcom again:

AW, You are in good company. On 28 Nov 1910 Roald Amundsen in the Fram hove
to in sight of what he took to be Bligh's Cap while he waited until he
good get a clear fix on his position before sailing to Baie Morbihan. This
was while en route to his 1910 -1912 Antarctic expedition. Malcom

Roald Amundsen - someone else we have been following around. He was the first to sail the NW Passage, (we were the 77th vessel, the 114th transit) and here he is again. He completed the NW Passage at Nome in 1906 and was down here in Fram 4 years later. We visited Teller from Nome, where many years later he and Nobile ended their airship crossing of the north pole.

We intend to wait here until the next big front has blown through - perhaps 48 hours - then sail for Port aux Francais. Unimaginably bleakly beautiful here - classic igneous landscape, thick moss, no other obvious vegetation except the Kerguelen Cabbage which I think we can see in little clumps. Binoculars only - we might try to land tomorrow if the wind dies but on the assumption that it is a national park, we will leave nothing but footsteps and take nothing away except photos. A massive igneous extrusion just to the south of us which looks for all the world like one of the President's faces on Mt. Rushmore - but transmogrified as a lizard.

Malcom, tks for advice - will try on departure.