Heavy Seas to Cape Town, South Africa

As the National Geographic Explorer heads towards Cape Town from Tristan da Cunha, the weather deteriorates and we experience heavy seas. We were incredibly lucky weather-wise to have been able to land at Tristan da Cunha, let along Nightingale Island. Inaccessible Island is well-named, and landing there is no mean feat given the drenching one zodiac experienced trying to leave. One passenger experienced a full immersion fall trying to get out of a zodiac on landing, destroying his camera, and a zodiac full of passengers copped a drenching from a wave as they were trying to push off from the landing beach.

The seas have built up again today and are forecast to continue to build into 5-8m swells for the next 24 hours. This will delay our arrival into Cape Town by several hours unless the conditions ease during the night. Another good day to lie in bed listening to music. Or to practice photographing waves crashing over the bow of the ship. The amount of water being displaced as the ship pitches in the water is an order of magnitude more than the size of our ship.  We had better get used to it – the forecast is not signing signs of improvement before Cape Town.