Gough Island, 220 miles south of Tristan da Cunha, South Atlantic Ocean
After the pleasure of four days at sea, arriving at Gough Island is a surprising and delightful sight. A mere 1700 miles from the nearest city (Cape Town, South Africa), it is a rugged vista, lush with green grasses, shrubs and even small trees; a steep and jagged island, rising to 2986 feet (Mount Edinburgh) seemingly straight up from the sea, receiving occasional heavy rainfall which results in voluminous and abounding cascading waterfalls, many of them hundreds of feet high. There is a leeward side to the island, the east side, just north of the small South African meteorological station (pictured here), where a small bay, Quest Bay, is reliable protection from the frequent south Atlantic gales.
Arriving in a full-blown south Atlantic gale…
And today M.S. Endeavour arrived at Gough Island in a full-blown south Atlantic gale. Escorted by 40 knots of wind, gusts of up to 60 knots and williwaws topping out at 90 knots, we sailed into Quest Bay along with broad-billed prions, white-bellied and grey-backed storm petrels, Antarctic terns, white-chinned, Atlantic and southern giant petrels, brown skuas, wandering, sooty and yellow-nosed albatrosses, porpoising sub-Antarctic fur seals and a raft of greater shearwaters dotting the water, in and above, through and through. Rain squalls, wind devils, water spouts and sunshine oftentimes collided to produce single or even double rainbows stretching from one end of the horizon to the other.
When the winds and the seas kick up a bit like this, they are sometimes referred to on the Beaufort Wind Scale as “phenomenal,” and that is how I would describe the sight today: the sheer towering landscape, the bright green and red and blue and yellow of the island vegetation as seen through the rainbows, the streaking sparkling white foam of the steel-blue sea and the myriad of thousands and thousands of birds in flight. Phenomenal.
After the pleasure of four days at sea, arriving at Gough Island is a surprising and delightful sight. A mere 1700 miles from the nearest city (Cape Town, South Africa), it is a rugged vista, lush with green grasses, shrubs and even small trees; a steep and jagged island, rising to 2986 feet (Mount Edinburgh) seemingly straight up from the sea, receiving occasional heavy rainfall which results in voluminous and abounding cascading waterfalls, many of them hundreds of feet high. There is a leeward side to the island, the east side, just north of the small South African meteorological station (pictured here), where a small bay, Quest Bay, is reliable protection from the frequent south Atlantic gales.
Arriving in a full-blown south Atlantic gale…
And today M.S. Endeavour arrived at Gough Island in a full-blown south Atlantic gale. Escorted by 40 knots of wind, gusts of up to 60 knots and williwaws topping out at 90 knots, we sailed into Quest Bay along with broad-billed prions, white-bellied and grey-backed storm petrels, Antarctic terns, white-chinned, Atlantic and southern giant petrels, brown skuas, wandering, sooty and yellow-nosed albatrosses, porpoising sub-Antarctic fur seals and a raft of greater shearwaters dotting the water, in and above, through and through. Rain squalls, wind devils, water spouts and sunshine oftentimes collided to produce single or even double rainbows stretching from one end of the horizon to the other.
When the winds and the seas kick up a bit like this, they are sometimes referred to on the Beaufort Wind Scale as “phenomenal,” and that is how I would describe the sight today: the sheer towering landscape, the bright green and red and blue and yellow of the island vegetation as seen through the rainbows, the streaking sparkling white foam of the steel-blue sea and the myriad of thousands and thousands of birds in flight. Phenomenal.
