Conditions: Very cold with a gusty easterly wind
Air Temp: 4 deg C
Sea Temp: 1 deg C
Wind: Fresh easterly
Sea State: Choppy here at anchor
Visibility: Good
Barometer: 1000 mb and steady
Latitude: 67 deg 36 mins South
Longitude: 68 deg 13 mins West
Thursday February 1st, 2001
1800 hrs: We left Thorne Point after breakfast and headed towards the entrance of the very narrow Gunnel Channel that leads down inside Adelaide Island. This channel, one of two, is very narrow and steep sided. Ice cliffs and glaciated mountains on both sides continuously carve masses of ice into the water. But to get to the entrance we first had to weave our way through eight miles of glacier ice.
The many glaciers to port were like conveyer belts – dumping huge quantities of ice that was then whisked away by the easterly offshore wind and the current. Even at Thorne Point, we were able to watch the enormous variety of bergs, bergy bits and mountains of brash ice, which were swept in a never-ending stream from the ice cliffs out into the sea. It was an extraordinary sight. I wished we could have captured it in slow motion.
Gunnel Channel, inside Adelaide Island, is rarely open. The seas well out from Thorne Point are usually frozen and impassable all year, but not so this year.
As for the passage through the channel…well that had to be the best half-day since arriving in Antarctica. The sky was blue but with streaky high clouds, the ice and snow a dazzling white, the shale northerly faces of the mountains brown and black and the sea was a deep blue-green.
At one point, a large number of blue-eyed cormorants flew past in waves. They didn’t just pass by, they all altered course, flew across the stern and then alongside parallel to Seamaster – examining us – before veering away once more. They all did this.
The life here in the south of the Antarctic Peninsula is not yet as we expected. We have seen a few seals, fewer penguins, and no whales for days. The bird life here is picking up – the skuas didn’t like us anchoring off “their” island this evening and made their feeling known by swooping down close to Janot who was on the bow at the anchor winch. And there have been a lot of snow petrels about, particularly noticeable when the wind is fresh.
We came to anchor behind Anchorage Island about an hour ago. The name sounds good. And as there is no alternative for where to spend tonight, this will be fine. It is a low rocky island with little snow, just rounded low “hills” that give us some protection from the waves – but little from the wind, which is whistling through the rigging. A mild katabatic wind again. It arrived just before we anchored, marching across the sea in a darkening line with a scattering of white horses following close behind.
The chart of the waters around the island is incorrect in places. One five-metre patch of water is in fact an above-water rock. But then again, how many yachts anchor here? We are probably one of the first. And we are in Antarctica, not in some civilized well-charted city harbour.
This is exploring – going places where few have been before; finding anchorages where few are known; working out our own weather forecasts as we are now beyond the reach of any; looking after ourselves because help is not often close at hand…
Sir Peter Blake
"Having vision is not enough. Change comes through realising the vision and turning it into a reality. It is easy to espouse worthy goals, values and policies; the hard part is implementation."
Learn about Sir Peter Blake and his journeys around the globe