Riding worms, finding Nemo, and racing greyhounds
Allow me to resort to the same analogy that our captain has been using lately, about the freemen hooking onto worms and riding through the dunes of planet Arrakis, here resembling the high swells of the South Pacific.
Low pressures usually prowl and travel along these high latitudes, like the worms in Frank Herbert’s science fiction masterpiece “Dune” that roam the vastness of Arrakis' empty desert. If you get to ride and steer them properly, they can offer a fantastic run.
Preparing in advance the ship, readying for one of those “worms” that shows in the weather forecasts, in the light breeze and big swell we roll, we thump over the floors with heavy steps looking for balance, freeing ports rhythmically banging against bulwarks, spilling off-board the water that often fills the decks and breezeways.
Royals and Top Gallants come down, Outer Jib, middle and upper staysails too. Then, a shade in the radar, approaching white horses over the breaking high seas, dark clouds falling from the sky. Here it comes, a potent Low, a large worm to ride. Powerful enough to carry 30 knots and gusting over the 40s, with its ups and downs but, anyway, apparently lasting for a handful of days.
Steady 7 to 8, often 9, 10, for a moment up to 12 knots. We catch up speed hooked on the backside of one of the Low Pressure Systems. That’s our chance for a great and fast ride on a good easterly direction. Quite a wild one too, with its jerks and jumps, requiring attention at all times, on deck, aloft, steering, but also just walking around the heeling corridors. It requires full foul weather gear, harnesses on deck, and closing watertight doors on the deckhouse and aft access to the main deck.
Squalls and showers run over us with rain and gusts as they sweep over the endless swells, like the clouds of dust in the wake of the worms running through the undulating endless sand expanses in the mythical Dune. Some of the squalls have a fierce appearance as they approach us on the dark horizon and show up in the ship’s radar. A few, though, don’t come with much wind shift; others do—just a hint not to get too confident. Often we just get to tickle the whiskers of the tiger, but we have to be aware of the sharp teeth hidden just behind.
A good run that brought us not far off from finding Nemo. 222 nm north of our path, we leave behind the remotest point in the world’s oceans, the most distant from any land. Luckily on board, there’s a compliment of people who choose a sailing holiday not by following the regular option for many at the shoreside, but in the furthest away seaside to be found on the planet. No other ships in the sea or planes in the sky have been around for weeks. It may sound like a forsaken place, but we haven’t found it to be so barren. Often, a kelp raft is spotted close to the ship. For a while, we race a whale. Now and then, we enjoy the company of dolphins. We use the forceful winds side by side with the albatrosses and petrels.
Kelp lives attached to rocks on the coast or at shallow depths. Once their holdfast is detached from the solid bottom, they become nomads of the sea. Here, thousands of miles from their home, they drift with the currents, still alive for a few months before decaying. There are plenty of rafts in the Southern Ocean, with recent surveys estimating that, between the latitudes of 46º-53º S, over 70 million plants are afloat at any one time.
Fin whales are known as the “greyhounds of the oceans.” They are sleek and fast, reaching up to 25 knots of speed during their lunge-feeding on the surface. Their size is only exceeded by the blue whales. Cosmopolitan as they are, they can be found in almost all oceans and seas in the world, including the areas in the middle of nowhere in the center of the South Pacific, like our encounters while we enjoy great sailing days on our way to Cape Horn. Now it pops up on starboard, now at port, then again. Keeping the same speed as Europa, a couple of times a solitary fin whale seemed to race the ship for a while.
Amongst the 4 to 6 meter swells and strong winds, now and then relatively small and highly energetic Hourglass dolphins cut through the surface and join the white horses and breakers at our side or under the bow. Distinctive species both for their striking black and white pattern and for inhabiting the whole of the cold southern ocean pelagic area all year round.
They share the same waters where the tiny and lively storm petrels feed and find their way to islets and remote coastlines to nest. The same as the many other species of petrels and albatrosses that we spot every day. Amongst them, the largest of the flying birds, the master of the offshore waters all along the Antarctic Convergence area and the Southern Ocean, the wandering albatrosses and their relatives, the royals.
Albatrosses and petrels, a group of species that nervously flutter or elegantly soar over incredible distances in the open ocean for most of their life.