cruising the bay part 2

After leaving St Croix Island, we headed for the third of the little rocky outcrops in this part of Algoa Bay, Jahleel, Island.

We were accompanied by a huge Antarctic Skua, a mean tempered scavenger, who flew low over our boat and then deposited a very nasty looking dropping in the sea, we were most grateful for his good timing!

It is not particularly interesting so we bypassed it and headed for the breakwater of the new deepwater harbour at Coega. I have written in some detail about these concrete structures, called dolosse in a previous post. They are enormous, about 25 tons each, and although they look as if they were randomly scattered, each one was precisely postioned using GPS. In front of the breakwater a seal was sleeping, wallowing around in the water with his flippers sticking up. He looked dead until he shook his head, and paid no attention to the boat at all.

We continued along, hugging the coast to avoid the increasing wind and swell, when, near St George's Strand, BINGO!! There in front of us, very close to the beach, we came across a pair of Southern Right whales. We acompanied them for 20 minutes as they gently wallowed along, apparently unfased by our presence. It was so wonderful and humbling being so close to these awesome and peaceloving creatures.

Reluctantly leaving the whales behind, and very aware of what a privilege it was to be in their company for a while, we moved on down the coast, heading past the mouth of the Swartkops River, just as some canoes paddled out to sea.

We passed one of the important beacons that keeps shipping safe, the Deal Light on the Eastern outskirts of town.

And then, as we entered the harbour and passed the harbour Master's tower, it was full throttle back to our berth, and the end of a really memorable and special experience. Thanks Llloyd, it was wonderful!

cruising the bay

Max and I have a thing about whales, and every year we make a point of spending time at the coast, looking out for them. When we went on our wonderful sunset sail a while ago, we met Lloyd Edwards, who runs an operation called Raggy Charters. Lloyd is both passionate and very knowledgeable about marine life in Algoa Bay and is involved in all sorts of marine conservation, education and research projects. In order to fund these, he has written a stunning book called Scenes from Algoa Bay, full of photos he has collected over his years of boating in the bay. In addition, he offers charters around the bay to the public.

Lloyd at the wheel of Orca 2, with Brenton Island in the background

We have been wanting to go on one of these ever since, and had decided that we would treat each other to a 3 hour whale watching and island cruise for each other's birthdays this year. Although the actual days are later in the year, we needed to book early while the whales are still in the Bay, as there is only a 3 month window of opportunity from June to September each year. We have been waiting for the right time, as far as available free time, weather etc is concerned, and finally it all came together.

There is, of course, no guarantee that we would see any whales, it is a very big bay, and the whales, although their numbers have recovered in recent years, are still not THAT plentiful. But it is a chance one takes, and anyway it would be fascinating to see the islands that we normally see as dark specks on the horizon when we look across the bay from our house.

So at 8.30 am we set off to the yacht club, and off we went on the Orca 2 catamaran. A gale and 5m swells had been forecast, and it was REALLY cold, but the sea wasn't too bad yet. After various infamous episodes in the past where both of us had deposited our breakfast in an inelegant fashion, I took the precaution of dosing us up with motion-sickness tablets, which, as it turned out, was a good thing, because there were times I felt very green around the gills, and if it hadn't been for the pills I would definitely have added to my already impressive portfolio of embarrassing moments!

For those of you who share my love of maps, and knowing where the things you are seeing are situated, here is a google image showing the hightlights of the cruise.

Did you know that whales leave 'footprints'?

Neither did we, until we saw a whale spouting nearby. It turned out to be a Brydes Whale. They are permanent residents of the bay, and are very shy creatures. They are also fast swimming predators who spend time chasing fish, so they are very hard to spot. We immediately headed fast in that direction, but the whale dived under the boat and dissappeared. The reason Lloyd was able to follow the movement of the whale and know which direction it was swimming in was because he is so practiced at seeing the "footprints" they leave in the water as they move along. If you look at the pattern of ripples on the water in front of the boat in the picture above, you will see an elyptical patch of smooth water to the bottom left.

This is the footprint, and you can learn to track whales by recognising them.

Our next milestone was Brenton Island, a bleak little outcrop of rock. From this angle, you can see the larger, but no less bleak, St Croix island peeping out beyond it.

Leaving Brenton and approaching St Croix, we noticed little clusters of penguins floating on the sea, and diving in after fish periodically.

We came around the windward side of St Croix, and immediately saw what a bleak and inhospitable place it is, stark, arid and windswept. Your first impression is that no living thing could survive there.

But as we rounded the island, our eyes adjusted to the well camoflaged clusters of birds nesting on the bare rocky slopes. Look closely and you will see lots of birds in this picture!

We saw penguins,

black cormorants,

white chested cormorants,

and the endangered black oystercatcher too.

It was quite amazing to see such a collection of birds clinging to life on this unfriendly windswept rock!

The cross on St Croix Island is a replica of one left by the Portugese explorer, Bartolomeu Diaz, way back in the 1488. Joshua Slocum talks about Algoa Bay in his book 'Sailing Alone Around the World':
"The early Portuguese navigators, endowed with patience, were more than sixty-nine years struggling to round this cape before they got as far as Algoa Bay, and there the crew mutinied. They landed on a small island, now called Santa Cruz, where they devoutly set up the cross, and swore they would cut the captain's throat if he attempted to sail farther. Beyond this they thought was the edge of the world, which they too believed was flat; and fearing that their ship would sail over the brink of it, they compelled Captain Diaz, their commander, to retrace his course, all being only too glad to get home. A year later, we are told, Vasco da Gama sailed successfully round the "Cape ofStorms," as the Cape of Good Hope was then called, and discovered Natal on Christmas or Natal day; hence the name. From this point the way to India was easy."

St Croix has been home to a couple of unsuccessful enterprises over the years. If you look carefully at the picture below, you can see the rusted remains of a large metal pot on the rocks. This was used by whalers to boil whale blubber, but the shark population around the island proved to much for them, they couldn't cope with the sharks jumping clear of the water to steal their whale meat, and abandoned the venture.

In the 1950s, an attemp was made to collect guano, and these cottages were built. But the island proved too inhospitable, and it was not viable trying to collect on the steep slopes, so that was also abandoned.

in this picture you can see the abandoned cottages of the guano collectors, and to the left is the smuggler's cave which goes about 30m into the rock of the island.

This makes it a great place for smugglers, and conservationists like Lloyd are constantly on the lookout for such activities, in fact when we arrived there was a boat there for a bit of illegal fishing, a fact that was duly noted and reported. A while ago Lloyd found a huge stash of Perlemoen (abalone) in the cave, left there for collection by poachers.

Who would have thought a little bare rock could be such a fascinating place? I will continue with the cruise in the next few days.... and we will meet the whales!

Skywatch Friday.... having a whale of a time

We had a wonderful time at Cape St Francis last Sunday, watching the unusual clouds on the horizon, the waves smashing on the rocks......

and humpback whales cruising past..... to see more, see previous post.

Have a great Skywatch, I must apologise in advance that I might not be able to visit as much as I would like to this week. Tom at Wiggers World has links to tons of great blogs who participate in the compulsive pleasure of skywatching!

Chilling and Whale watching

One of the highlights of our year is the return of the whales to our shores. Each year, between June and September, whales (mostly Southern Right and Humpbacks) return from their feeding grounds in Antarctica to give birth and mate. It is an event we look forward to keenly, and we have a few favourite spots where we like to sit and look for them.

The prime one, for us, is the wild side at Cape St Francis. There are few things in this world that can beat the simple pleasure of sitting on the rough, weather beaten rocks, with waves pounding in front of one, watching pods of whales ambling past, or if you are REALLY lucky, stopping to play.

We have been champing at the bit to get down there since the beginning of June, but were stuck at home, as my extremely high maintenance father was staying with us. However, we despatched him back home (with, I am ashamed to confess, a HUGE sigh of relief!) on Friday afternoon, and with indecent haste took ourselves off for a weekend in St Francis to unwind from the stress of the previous few weeks, and hopefully see a whale.

We only got there quite late on Saturday, and after unpacking, we headed straight for the rocks to see the sunset. We watched for ages, snapped some shots of interesting clouds, and sat in the car checking out each other's photos.

We heard a boom on the water that sounded different to the waves crashing on the rocks, and looked up to see a group of humpback whales right in front of us, lobtailing and creating huge splashes. It was SOOOO exciting! It was already too dark to take decent stills, so I just stood and squealed like a five year old at the pure joy of it. With great presence of mind, Max set his camera to take a movie clip, and despite the poor light, it worked. He will try and post it on his blog in the next few days, and if he does I'll post the link. The one thing that we find hugely frustrating about our cameras is that they film in MOV format, which plays back on Quicktime, an Apple product. It does not seem to be compatable with any of the programmes we have for editing movies. I looked on the site, because I considered getting quicktime pro, but there is no mention of being able to use it to edit clips and make stills from them, on a Windows based PC. I don't want to spend all that money upgrading if the programme will not do what I need it to do. If anyone knows what we should do, please let me know!

This might sound corny to anyone who has not been in the presence of whales, but I find they impart an amazing sense of wellbeing. Even when they are too far away to see anything but the distant spout of vapour as they breathe, somehow their presence is so powerful, peaceful, even joyful. (Obviously not everyone reacts like this, I imagine the guys who handle the harpoons on the whaling ships just see them as a particularly big catch, but less hardened and soul-less individuals seem to be deeply touched by them.)

The next morning we went to watch the sunrise at otters landing .....

.... and saw a school of bottlenose dolphins cruise by. They meant business, and were heading fast across the bay, no playful jumping was going on, so the photos are not too exciting.

Still, this is another animal that has a similar effect to that of the whales, and it is always fun to spot them. I know many people, and particularly surfers, (including our son) who have swum amongst groups of dolphins and they always come out of the water on an absolute high.

After breakfast we headed straight for the lighthouse, because we thought that Seal Point, which offers 360 degree views from the rocks, would be a good place to spot any whales that might be around.

Before long we had spotted the first group...

and by mid morning we had seen 3 families cruise past.

They were not playing like the ones the previous night, and were much further out, but it was still wonderful to have a grandstand view of these awesome creatures.

Nothing could have been more effective in getting rid of the stress of the past 5 weeks, and we went home content and relaxed.

yippee, look who's back!!

It all started because I very reluctantly had to go and collect some curtains from a client, to make alterations. On my way back i spotted some unusually black smoke on the horizon, so i decided to do a detour and investigate. It was either coming from the garbage tip, or the airport runway which runs next to it.

This was as close as I could get, it transpired that an enormous heap of car tyres at the tip had caught fire. Apparently it is going to take a while for the fire department to extinguish it.

Anyway I was so close to Schoenmakerskop by then, and I suddenly remembered that it is June already, so I decided to pop down and see if the whales had arrived yet. They are usually here from June till September, in our winter, in order to breed and calve. Then in September they make their way south, and spend the Antarctic summer feeding on the rich krill, which sustains them during the journey north to us.

Much to my delight, there they were! They were playing around far out to sea, so the photos aren't great, but now that they are here, I will have 3 months to try and get some better ones!