At sea to South Georgia via Shag Rocks

Heading more or less due east, we put our clocks on an hour, something we will do four more times before arriving in Cape Town. The next hour forward will be when we get to South Georgia.

We had a pretty disturbed night with heavy seas making the ship pitch and roll quite a lot. We went for breakfast and then up to the theatre for Will's lecture on birds.

After lunch, Stefan came on the intercom to say we were approaching Shag Rocks and the ship would do a 360 degree circle around them.

We went out on deck to see the rocks appear out of the mist. It was very gloomy and quite cold. There were hundreds of shags flying past the ship, going to and from the rocks.

Our first sight of Shag Rocks in the mist

Doing a 360 degree circuit of the rocks

More photos of the rocks

The best close-up shot I managed to take of the shags

More shags!

We spent about an hour circling the rocks before we continued our voyage to South Georgia. We were pleased to get back inside the ship out of the cold.

There were two more lectures in the afternoon: "Seals of the sub-Antarctic islands" by Kara and then "The Cryosphere: Where the world is frozen" by Luqui. These were followed by the daily recap before we had our evening meal with Jean, Philip, Cliff and Andy. We discovered that both Cliff and Andy had originally come from Bolton - it's a small world!

Tomorrow there is an early start, as we arrive in South Georgia at 6am and then go ashore at Salisbury Plain half an hour later.

Distance Travelled: 336NM