South America & Falklands - part sixteen

The Beagle Channel was charted by the ship that later carried Charles Darwin. He doubtless found it something of a relief as on the Atlantic, 'The misery I endured from seasickness is far beyond what I ever guessed at.'

I'm suffering photography overdose. Passengers - myself included - succumb to the subject flavour of the minute. I take a shot or, more likely, umpteen shots, load them onto my iPad, delete or edit and file. 

As when I was a reporter, I fret about missing the shot. Heaven forbid I should miss the holiday picture everyone else gets. I concentrate so much on snapping away that I lose the time to absorb it all. I may never be here again. How many mountains? Rainbows? Glaciers? I rationalize. Can't get too much.

The huge Golden Princess - 2,600 passengers, 108,000 tons - lumbers by.

Nine times the passengers Minerva carries and a little under ten times the tonnage. This, of course, means that we've been places this behemoth of the seas can't reach.

We smugly watch her pass and make rude remarks about the gigantic video screen. 

According to the line's website:

'Each state-of-the-art Times Square-style LED (Light Emitting Diode) screen is more than 300 square feet in size with a 69,000-watt sound system and has sufficient lighting power to be seen clearly at mid-day and heard clearly even while the ship is moving at full speed -- offering passengers a movie experience comparable to the best shoreside movie theater.'

Movies in such an extraordinary setting? In the middle of all this natural beauty? Ha! Now gotta get back to my photo watch. Oh, no, first some downloading and checking my most recent shots. Hey! What's everyone else doing?

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Cape Horn on a raw morning in the Great Southern Ocean. No other land for 360 degrees around the bottom of the world.

Wind at 40 knots gusting to 60.

As the sky lightens, we draw close. Nigh on 56 degrees south. Old salts said, 'Below 40 degrees, there is no law. Below 50, no God'.

Four Chilean sailors endure four month stints here. You can see their quarters and radio masts.

On a Cape Horn monument are the words of Chilean poet Sara Vial:

'I, the albatross that awaits you at the end of the world. I, the forgotten soul of the sailors lost, that crossed Cape Horn from all the seas of the world'.

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Now back home and reading the above passage, I’m reminded of my 2001 voyage around the world on a British container ship. The trip, from London to London, circumnavigated by way of the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn.

A fine British ornithologist, David Ballance, was also aboard and took this picture of a Wandering Albatross in the Southern Ocean. As it's appropriate here, I’ve digitalized the shot from film, so it doesn’t entirely reflect his wonderful photography.

Here I am on a bridge wing of the Palliser Bay as we neared Cape Horn. Note that I wore the same jacket then as in the ‘selfie’ taken in the next posting on this trip. It was also with me on Mount Everest in the early 1990s, a testament to Mountain Equipment Co-op’s products of twenty-five years ago.

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Cape astern, wind's so fierce it dislodges Minerva's binnacle (magnetic compass) cover.

An unfortunate crewman's sent for'ard.

Eventually, he's forced to take his gloves off. Impressive lashing under miserable conditions. These are my shots of Cape Horn and - ha! ha! - no one else was around.

Returning to the Beagle Channel, we pass the Logos, wrecked here in 1988. All aboard were saved, which is more than can be said for most whose ships have gone down near the Horn.