Today was a mellow day. A light breeze from the east welcomed us as the sun rose into a blue sky. Watchers scanned the sea for birds and whales. The air temperature was perfect; life couldn’t be better. But it was a day of transition as well. We were moving further into the higher latitudes and there were signs.
We have visited five islands; the Selvages, La Palma, Fogo, Ascension and St. Helena and we have five to go; Tristan, Nightingale, Inaccessible, South Georgia and the Falklands. We had put the Tropic of Cancer, the Equator and the Tropic of Capricorn behind us. Indeed, the sun now rose and moved into the northern sky at noon before setting in the west. That will disorient us but we look forward to reinterpreting our world.
The tarps on the bridge wings and over the pool deck have been removed in preparation for the winds at higher latitudes. All the white surfaces on deck have been repainted and the revarnishing is almost complete. The Endeavour sparkles with the brightness of its new surfaces.
Those who awoke before sunup this morning saw the southern cross as we had our first cloudless sky in some days. The wind blew gently from the east barely making any white caps. As the day progressed the breeze freshened, back through north to the northwest and eased in the late afternoon. Was the change in wind direction signalling us a transition from the benevolence of the tropics to the more robust weather of the southern ocean?
During the morning seabirds began to appear, the first since we had left St. Helena. Storm petrels began searching the wake for food driven up by the propeller. Soft-plumaged petrels approached from port, rising high on the wind and racing forward, easily out distancing us. Large, dark petrels appeared as well. These great-winged petrels rose high on the wind before also moving off further south. And, not once, but twice, a yellow-nosed albatross quartered in from the east, rose high over the bow and followed its smaller cousins towards Tristan.
We now joined spiritually with Robert Cushman Murphy who said, “I now belong to a higher cult of mortals, for I have seen the albatross!” Our transition was complete. We had seen an albatross and there was no turning back. We were, indeed, headed to higher latitudes, we had left the tropics and we were eager for more albatrosses, penguins and subantarctic islands.
