A day at sea

October 26: at sea to the Falkland Islands

Today was spent en route to the Falkland Islands.  Although we were told the voyage was considered fairly smooth, moving about the ship was an exercise in balance and we gained a deeper (and a more personal) insight into the image authors paint of how sailors walk.  A fair number of our group members are wearing anti-motion sickness patches, and quite a few others who don’t have the patches decided that bed was the place to be today. We are grateful that we have steady tummies, and we appreciate the courage of people who know they will be ill but still come on these trips through their love of nature.  We also discovered that working out on exercise equipment is an interesting experience when the machine is moving about.  Watching water slosh around the shower floor was also fascinating.

We spent a fair bit of time on the bridge staring out into the ocean watching for sea birds and ocean-based mammals.  Our endeavors paid off in that we got to see several species of albatross, several Peale’s dolphins (picture attached taken through a window so it’s not great, but they are there), two fin whales and one humpback whale, and some smaller birds. One group of smaller sea birds are called petrels, after St. Peter, because they appear to walk on the surface of the ocean. Between the strength of the wind, the roughness of the seas, and the flight patterns of the sea birds, taking photos was a bit of a challenge to say the least.