11th January 2008 - Drake Passage, Cape Horn and Beagle Channel.

Time: 09:54, 57 degrees 21.00' South, 65 degrees 42.50' West, overcast and occasional showers at first, brightening up and staying dry later, Air Temperature 3 oC, Water Temperature 4.7 oC, Wind Southwest force 6.

This morning was a memorable albatross day on board the Marco Polo. I got out of the shower at 6.45am and before getting dressed I opened the curtains in my cabin to see a Light-mantled Sooty Albatross glide by just outside. This is a bird you only dream of seeing in this part of the world. I threw some clothes on and legged it as quickly as I could to the back deck with camera and bins to see if I could relocate it. I had been told they sometimes stay with the ship for a while but there was no obvious sign of it. I scanned the sea and was luck to pick it up gliding towards the ship up along the wake. I managed to get the camera rolling and got a few shaky seconds of it on tape as it passed close to the starboard side of the ship. I could not believe my luck, these are not common on these cruises and it was the first time I had seen one, it was not seen again.

Light-mantled Sooty Albatross this morning.

Light-mantled Sooty Albatross this morning.

By nine o'clock a group of about 20 passengers had made it to the back deck and for the rest of the morning we were treated to Wandering, Black-browed and Grey-headed Albatrosses passing close to the ship. It was great to hear the gasps of amazement from the passengers as the giant birds repeatedly cruised by the port side of the ship.

Passengers looking for albatrosses off the back deck of the Marco Polo.

Since the start of the season I have found it hard to convince passengers of the size of these birds because on the open sea scale gets thrown all out of shape. This morning however I had no such difficulty. A young Wandering Albatross hovered about 30 feet (9m) directly over us for a short while and it looked like a small aeroplane.

Grey-headed Albatross this morning.

Grey-headed Albatross this morning.

Young Wandering Albatross this morning.

Black-browed Albatross this morning.

Following that the wind strengthened as we approached Cape Horn and everyone was on deck taking photos. Weather wise this was the best cruise so far this season.

The Atlantic Ocean this afternoon (port side of the ship!)

The Pacific Ocean this afternoon (Starboard side of the ship!)

And to conclude Tom Sharpe's contribution to my blog here he is talking about the geology of Cape Horn.

Tom – After a day and a half sailing from Half Moon Island, with nothing to look at but the ocean, whales, albatrosses and things like that, we finally saw some rocks. We sailed close to Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America. It is part of a big cluster of islands called Tierra del Fuego. Cape Horn and the islands around it rise steeply out of the ocean. Some are just pinnacles of rock. They look like the tops of mountains which have been submerged by the sea. And that’s exactly what they are.

The whole area was land that was covered by glaciers during the last ice age. The glaciers carved deep valleys between high mountains. When the ice age ended, sea level rose and flooded the valleys, leaving the mountains as islands. Charles Darwin, the famous naturalist and geologist, sailed round Cape Horn in HMS Beagle in the early 1830s. He wrote then that the islands looked like drowned mountains.

Cape Horn this afternoon.

Cape Horn is notorious for the many shipwrecks that have occurred here. This is where the Pacific Ocean meets the Atlantic Ocean. The sea is usually very stormy. Winds from the west blowing across the Pacific Ocean are diverted south by the high Andes Mountains along the coast of South America and get funnelled around Cape Horn. Sailing ships in particular had a hard time rounding The Horn into the wind, and many sank.

Rocky islands near Cape Horn (photo Tom Sharpe)

After sailing past Cape Horn, we continued north along the east coast of the islands of Tierra del Fuego until we got to the mouth of the Beagle Channel. The Beagle Channel is named after the ship that Charles Darwin sailed on. It’s only a couple of miles wide, but over 120 miles long and runs roughly east-west. It was a valley cut by glaciers during the ice age and flooded by the sea when the ice melted.

In this area, the Beagle Channel is the border between the countries of Chile and Argentina. We sailed up the Channel with high mountains on the starboard (right) side in Argentina, and hills on the port (left) side in Chile and docked in the port of Ushuaia on the Argentinian side.

It has been a great week for rocks and ice and glaciers. We saw lots of interesting rocks from the time 100 million years ago when the Antarctic Peninsula was a series of volcanic island chains. We saw big glaciers and lots of icebergs.

I hope you’ve enjoyed hearing about geology this week as much as I’ve enjoyed telling you about it. I’m grateful to Jim for the opportunity to contribute to his blog.

Keep rocking!

Mammals
Peale’s Dolphin 1 (breaching)
Unidentified Dolphins 5

Birds
Wandering Albatross 6+
Unidentified Giant Petrel 20+
Northern Giant Petrel 2
Southern Giant Petrel 1 5
Grey-headed Albatross 4
Black-browed Albatross 30+
Cape Petrel 4
Blue Petrel 20+
Antarctic Prion 150+
White-chinned Petrel 3
Wilson’s Storm Petrel 40+
Magellanic Penguin 300+ (Beagle Channel)
Imperial Shag 150+
Chilean Skua 16
Brown Skua 1
South American Tern 40+
Kelp Gull 40+

Note: A + sign after the counts indicates that we saw at least that number but more may have been present.