Ocean Tramp – Surprises even on grey days

Blog Dec 17th
This morning we awoke to a somewhat dreary, rainy and cloudy day, destination Greenwich Island and Yankee Harbour, a distance of about 30 nautical miles. What started out as a seemingly so-so day turned into a wonderful surprise, for despite the drizzle and overcast the welcoming cacophony of trumpeting penguins on our arrival at Yankee Harbour filled the air. The area was awash in Gentoo penguins, thousands of black and white shapes as far as the eye could see in either direction although an occasional Chinstrap mingling in the crowd braked the cadence. Rookeries were packed with either expectant mothers sitting on their eggs, or new moms attending to their hatchlings that were nestled safely under white feathered bellies, periodically emerging to reveal their grey fluffy attire. However, this was far from the only surprise we enjoyed this day. A harem of six female elephant seals lounged luxuriously on the shore, occasionally shifting their corpulent bodies closer together, perhaps to conserve heat. Their grunts and snoring were hard to ignore, at times almost comical because of their grimacing and yawning faces.