Sandy Bay - January 4, 2009

True to his promise, Jonas woke us up at 6 a.m. Breakfast was served from 6 a.m. to 7.30 a.m. and those of us in groups 5, 6, 7 and 8, were encouraged to go to breakfast first. These groups would be landing at around 7 a.m.

The weather conditions were not perfect, as we had some rain showers, but the swell was manageable and we did not have too much wind. At first Captain Pavel tried to anchor, but that meant the ship swung around and the swell hit us side on, so we had a lot of rolling. Then he raised the anchor and let the ship drift, every so often turning so the bow would be into the swell. This worked perfectly, and soon the four groups were off and on their way to Sandy Bay.

It wasn’t a very long Zodiac ride, and once we arrived, everyone was on shore to greet us: King Penguins, Royal Penguins, Giant Petrels and Elephant Seals. Unfortunately due to the rabbit explosion which has occurred on this island over the last 5 or so years, the wooden boardwalk which gave access to a viewing platform overlooking the Royal Penguin rookery, has collapsed and been removed. Due to such extensive erosion it was not possible to walk up to see the rookery at all, but with so many Royals on the shore and going to and from the sea, we had plenty of opportunities to see these feisty little guys with their mad hairdos. They were not at all perturbed to see us on their beach and in fact almost ignored our presence totally.

The King Penguins however, were as usual extremely curious. Both adults and chicks came up to see who these visitors were. We all loved the experience of having the birds walk up to us totally unafraid. Again, most of the big bull elephant seals had already left, but there were still some sizeable fellows on the beach and further up in the tussock. They are very clumsy on shore and moving to and from the water, but once in the water they seem to glide effortlessly.

At 9 a.m. the groups rotated, and the second lot of people went ashore.

This way we did not have more than 50 people ashore at one time and everyone had an equal amount of time on the beach. Before boats came to disembark and embark passengers, Captain Pavel would turn the ship to keep it as still as possible to facilitate the embarkation process. Everything worked like clockwork and by 11 a.m. the last boat had returned to the ship and all Zodiacs were shortly secured on the stern in preparation for our crossing to Hobart.

Everything was secured and tied down on the bow deck and we were encouraged to do a similar process in our cabins as we will be entering into a low pressure system which could cause rolling. By lunchtime we had left the shelter of Macquarie Island, but the sea was not too bad and again, we are veterans now at getting around onboard a moving ship.

After lunch it was definitely nap time as we had all been up early for our exciting landing at Sandy Bay. At 3 p.m. we had another documentary from the BBC Planet Earth Series and after we had enjoyed afternoon tea, Kara talked to us about ‘Life in the Cold; adaptations of animals to living in cold climates’.

At 6 p.m. a small group of us returned to the Lecture Hall to hear Terry play his ragtime. He is a very interesting man and he plays the piano very well. He gave us a short lead up to each piece he played and at the end took requests from his list of music which he has with him.

By dinner time the ship was moving a little more, but still not so much that we felt uncomfortable. In fact it could probably be described as a very soothing movement and one which helped us to fall asleep very quickly.