Le Soleal motored south overnight to reach Sandy Bay on Macquarie Island. Only 60 passengers are allowed ashore at any time, so the groups are assigned 2 hour landing slots each in the morning, and 90 minutes in the late afternoon.
Our run of miraculous luck with the weather has continued – we have prolonged sunny periods at the island, which some of the naturalists have never seen. The weather is changing fast though with a strong low pressure system passing below the island, generating strong winds. Our run of luck might be coming to an end soon.
Sandy Beach is relatively small, but supports a large Royal Penguin rookery, several small King Penguin rookeries and a herd of juvenile (mostly male) elephant seals.
There’s a strong wind blowing across the Royal Penguin rookery. Penguins in mud smell pretty bad!
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At 4pm, the Captain calls a special meeting to announce that Day 3 at Lusitania Bay has to be cancelled as severe weather in the form of 3 low pressure systems are heading our way. If we stay at Macquarie, we may be here for several days, and still need to sail north through one of the low pressure systems.
The weather forecast for wind and swell is always presented on a chart that ranges in colour from blue (flat seas) through to purple (10 metre plus swells), which we don’t want to experience in the Furious Fifties in the Southern Ocean. So we will drop the rangers back at ANARE station by 9pm, and head north-east to the shelter of the Auckland Islands. It will take us about 36 hours to get there, and the sick bags left in the staterooms tell the story of the Force 7 conditions expected during the night. Tomorrow will be a sea day with all of the decks closed due to the weather. The good news is that the low pressure is generating a swell behind us rather than in front of the ship, which will allow the ship to remain reasonable steady in the conditions.
The only other ship in the area at the moment is a Silversea ship that was meant to be heading to Macquarie Island next. It has been forced to curtail its itinerary to go no further south than our next destination – the Auckland Islands.
