Leaving a harbour for the open sea can be daunting. We read forecasts and anticipate the swells and the wind, but experiencing the transition from stillwater to rolling ocean is completely different – the change in how the vessel starts to shift beneath you, shudders as waves bounce from the hull, tips and tilts and rolls as you take up the rhythm of the sea. And when the ocean you’re heading out into is the Southern ocean, well, that takes it up another level entirely.
Even as someone who gets quite significantly seasick, I enjoy this transition. The bubbling anticipation of how the ocean is going to feel for this passage – because it’s never the same twice. Leaving Campbell island after a brief respite from the roaring forties, running up the eastern coastline before launching out on a course for the Auckland islands, we feel how the wind has calmed a little since our battle south from Bluff. The swells are still mountainous, an endless march of watery hills extending towards the horizon. They hurl themselves against the black cliffs, foaming white and glowing in the evening light.
I feel at home in the rolling, dynamic environment. The seasickness pills probably help. Out on deck, salt-tossed and wind-blasted, we are surrounded by albatrosses. They’re impressive up close, but over the distant cliffs they are dwarfed to the size of midges. A cloud of albatrosses. A speckling of white along the ledges behind Bull rock. Campbell island is the only home of Campbell albatrosses, golden-eyed glorious birds that are small by albatross standards. They raft on the water like ducks. They soar past with a serious glare, effortlessly riding the biting gale.
Early evening light plays across the island. On our approach is was mist-wreathed and invisible, and now as we leave it seems to pop out of the surrounding sea as the sun illuminates it.
Southern Royal albatrosses bob over the swells. They preen and shake and heave their massive bodies up off the water, taxiing along with big paddle-feet before the wind catches them. They follow us out into the blue, their home. As much as I’m loath to leave this beautiful island, I love heading out to sea. I want to spend days, weeks, months riding the currents over the deep, in company of these oceanic birds.
Campbell recedes into the blue, and is gone. We plough through swells along an invisible line towards the Auckland islands, just north of the setting sun. In one direction, the sea is blue and soft, swells lost behind us. In the other it is a heady mix of black and gold, towering dark hills capped in spangling spray. A night of sliding from one end of my bunk to the other is about to begin, so I stay out in the wind-tossed world for as long as I can, watching the albatross so at ease over the ocean.
