29th November 2013
Part II
An American Welcoming Committee
The New World has a strong tradition of sending its welcoming committees. Today was no exception.
Between 0930 and 1000 hours we crossed onto the South American continental shelf, just west north west of the remote Chilean island group of Diego Ramirez, with the ocean floor silently rising up beneath up from the Mornington Abysmal Plain at 3000 to 4000 metres depth to around 150-200 metres depth on the shelf. As we passed to the north of the island group the most northerly of the islands became visible on the ship’s radar. I glanced at the dim black and green screen with its cyclical ‘refresh’ sweeps; they lay only 24 nautical miles to our south.
“We’d see them if the fog lifted”, said Captain Klaas surveying his charts in the wheelhouse and preparing to move into the deckhouse to deliver his seminal pre-Horn lecture to an eager voyage crew, who were there waiting, packed into this ‘saloon on the high seas’, with its foggy windows tracked with the occasional streak of salt water blasted through aging seals from the tumult outside.
Talk all about the ship, above and below deck, was of ‘Rounding the Horn’. The sense of expectation was palpable, yet there was no sign of this great looming landmass, beneath which we were passing.
As if to herald our imminent arrival to the Americas and that wind-swept and ocean-smashed region of rocky promontories, known as the Horn, a pair of what we ascertained to be Peale’s dolphins (aka Cape Horn dolphins as they are truly a Cape Horn restricted species) briefly visited our barque just before 1400 hours. Unlike their cousins the Hourglass dolphins and the Southern Right Whale dolphins, which we’d cavorted with (at least in our dreams) weeks before further west in the Southern Ocean, the Cape Horn fellows didn’t go much for the breaching and twisting in our bow wave. Beneath the clear blue waters their speeding grey, black and white bodies glistened; a few passes along the port beam and around the bow, barely raising a deft dark dorsal fin, and they were gone before most of us could return the favour with a friendly fire of shutter action. But at 1530 hours they returned to continue the welcome, and I managed to freeze a fleeting image on camera. We were six hours from crossing into the Atlantic Ocean and this esteemed Cape Horn envoy from the mist-enshrouded Americas had successfully completed its dolphomatic mission for the UN: Europa was duly welcomed. Visiting pass granted. Please proceed.
planetlars 