If sea conditions permit, we will spend the next two and a half days crossing the open ocean, destined for Elephant Island. Our visits to South Georgia Island have been breathtaking and awe-inspiring. It will rank high on my list of favorite places in the world. Learning about the recovery of whale and seal populations after the mass slaughter of these species here gave me reason for optimism.

Sailing across vast expanses of ocean, however, is only slightly more interesting than watching paint dry. Dodging icebergs adds a measure of excitement, as does attempting to photograph whales. These majestic creatures possess an uncanny ability to vanish into the deep at the exact moment your autofocus locks on, leaving you with hundreds of high-resolution photos of empty, gray ocean spray. The simple act of walking down the hallway produces a result not too different from a drunken person walking with one boot on.

Fortunately, the seas today have been better than our first crossing, and my body has decided to retain all the delicious food I have been eating.

Despite the challenges of sailing on the high seas, our vessel, the Magellan Explorer, built in 2019, has been fantastic. It is the length of a football field and weighs almost 6,000 tons. It is propelled by two 3,440 KW engines and can make 14 knots in open water. Bow and stern thrusters allow maneuvering in very tight areas. She can cruise for 60 days before refueling. According to ChatGPT, filling the tank costs a mere $800,000!

Gold Harbour is so called because the sun’s rays make the cliffs yellow with their light in the morning and evening. It is a small bay with Bertrab Glacier at its head. During the early 1900s, the feature was variously called “Anna’s Bay”, “Gold-Hafen” or “Sandwich Bay”. The approved name appears to have taken root through common usage by sealers and whalers and is now well established.

When we arrived this afternoon, the surf was too high to allow for Zodiac landings, and the sky was cloud-covered. Instead, Zodiac cruises were offered. I opted to stay on board as everything photographed from the Zodiac would be backlit, and I was able to get some very nice shots of the location from the ship. Jeanine opted for the Zodiac, which allowed her to get very close to the X-rated wildlife action on the beach.

My decision to stay behind proved fortuitous. While photographing a nearby bergy bit (a small iceberg), I heard a loud gunshot-like sound. I noticed the iceberg start to rotate and quickly trained my camera on it. The video below compiles the sequence of frames I shot as it flipped upside down.

Saint Andrew’s Bay is a two-mile-wide bight framed by the towering Allardyce Range and overlooked by the dramatic 1,600-foot rock face of Mount Skittle. The bay is ringed by three massive retreating ice rivers: the Cook, Buxton, and Heaney Glaciers. It is renowned for hosting the largest king penguin colony on Earth, a dense “penguin city” that carpets the glacial plain with hundreds of thousands of breeding birds. Alongside this spectacular avian assembly, the dark sand beaches are heavily populated by southern elephant seals and Antarctic fur seals, offering an overwhelming polar wildlife spectacle.

Shortly after leaving Saint Andrew’s Bay, we spotted several whales swimming near our ship. These are my best photos of a whale so far, which is not saying much. I hope to have more chances and opportunities to improve my technique.

Grytviken is a historic former whaling settlement located in King Edward Cove. Founded in 1904 by Norwegian explorer Carl Anton Larsen, it served as the island’s first and largest commercial whaling station until depleted whale populations forced its closure in the 1960s. Today, the abandoned settlement has no permanent residents, but it is a major destination for eco-tourism and expedition cruises. Visitors travel by sea to tour the South Georgia Museum, see the historic Norwegian Lutheran church, and visit the grave of legendary polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton.

I got the last seat on the Zodiac before Jeanine’s and was able to photograph her coming ashore. Karen and Tom were also on her boat.

Hercules Bay is a small, visually striking bay about half a mile wide. It features a dramatic natural amphitheater of folded sedimentary rock cliffs and a tall waterfall that drops hundreds of feet down to a narrow cobblestone beach. Norwegian whalers historically named it after the Hercules (or Herkules), a prominent whale catcher ship that frequently visited its waters. Today, we toured it by Zodiac and spotted our first macaroni penguins, as well as king penguins, fur seals, and elephant seals.

Leith Harbour (also known as Leith Whaling Station) was the largest land-based whaling station on the northeast coast of South Georgia. It operated from 1909 to 1965 and was a self-contained working town at its peak, housing up to 500 men, complete with bunkhouses, workshops, a bakery, and a cinema. It processed ~50,000 whales for oil and fertilizer.

Stromness is an abandoned whaling station on the northern coast of South Georgia Island. It was the destination of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s rescue journey in 1916. Exhausted and lacking a map, he and his men descended through the valley and encountered a frozen waterfall. Not realizing an easier path existed around it, they lowered themselves straight down the ice using their last bit of rope before arriving at the whaling station. These falls now bear his name, and we hiked a 3-mile round trip over rocky terrain to see them.

When Shackleton arrived at the station, he knocked on the door of the white building shown below to seek assistance. It is the only structure that has been restored within the otherwise dilapidated whaling station.

Fortuna Bay is a picturesque, glacier-fed inlet measuring 3 miles long and 1 mile wide. It was named after the Fortuna, an early 20th-century vessel from the Norwegian-Argentine whaling expedition that established the nearby station at Grytviken. It holds significant historical value as a key landmark on the final leg of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s legendary 1916 rescue trek across the island to Stromness.

Salisbury Plain is a broad, glacial outwash plain located within the Bay of Isles. Formed by the retreat of the flanking Grace and Lucas Glaciers, it represents one of the largest open, flat spaces on the island. The area is globally renowned for hosting South Georgia’s second-largest breeding colony of king penguins, with populations reaching up to 250,000 individual birds during peak periods.

Right Whale Bay is a 1.5-mile-wide bay located along the rugged northern coast of South Georgia Island. Named after the southern right whales that historically and currently frequent its waters. The bay is a pristine sub-Antarctic wildlife sanctuary, famously hosting a massive hillside colony of roughly 25,000 breeding pairs of king penguins. Its black sand and gravel beaches are also densely populated by thousands of breeding Antarctic fur seals, alongside smaller numbers of wallowing elephant seals.

Shag Rocks are a cluster of six remote, jagged sub-Antarctic islets. They rise abruptly out of the open, wild expanses of the Southern Ocean. They are situated roughly 150 miles west of South Georgia Island and about 620 miles east of the Falkland Islands, sitting directly atop the underwater Scotia Ridge.

After two days at sea, it was quite unexpected to see these rocks seemingly materialize out of the fog. A close look at each photo below reveals a staggering number of birds thrilled to have this mid-ocean sanctuary.

Today we crossed the Antarctic Convergence (Antarctic Polar Front). It forms a distinct ecological, hydrological, and climatic ring around the southern polar region, dividing marine life and water temperatures sharply. While at sea, we are attending a number of presentations about the birds, dolphins, whales, geology, and history of the area. Ocean conditions have been favorable relative to our first day at sea, and we are adjusting to life on the water.

We set sail for the South Georgia Islands this afternoon. We are starting this open-ocean crossing ahead of schedule to take advantage of favorable conditions. This will mean less time in the Falklands and more time in South Georgia, which is an additional bonus in my mind. According to a reverse image search, the bird pictured above is a southern fulmar. I photographed it from the aft deck while on whale watch. I spotted over a dozen spouts, all distant, and by the time I could bring my camera to a shooting position, all that could be captured was a small plume of water. I hope to do better in the coming days. Still it was exciting to see evidence of so many whales in the area.

This morning we put ashore in Stanley, the capital of the Falkland Islands, where approximately 3,000 citizens reside, accounting for nearly 80% of the territory’s population. The image above is a panorama of the waterfront and is best viewed by clicking on it and then zooming in.

Christ Church Cathedral is the southernmost Anglican cathedral in the world. Adjacent to the cathedral is the Whalebone Arch, constructed in 1933 from the jawbones of two blue whales to commemorate the centenary of continuous British administration in the Falklands.

We also visited the Falkland Islands Museum and National Trust, which provides a comprehensive overview of the area’s history, climate, geology, and wildlife. It also provides a full account of a 74-day undeclared conflict between Argentina and the United Kingdom in 1982 over the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands (Spanish: Islas Malvinas), South Georgia, and the South Sandwich Islands. It was moving to see how many places in the Falklands are now named after fallen soldiers from the conflict.

When we returned to our ship just before lunch, we noticed that the chairs on our balcony had been lashed to the railing. This does not bode well for our next open-water crossing, since this precaution was not deemed necessary on our last crossing, which was rough enough to render the vast majority of passengers extremely seasick.