Island Odyssey: Isles of Scilly

Early on the morning of 14th May 2011 the Explorer sailed by Bishop Rock, the smallest island with a building. There was a wakeup call for those who wished to see Bishop Rock, which I ignored. However, I caught a picture of Bishop Rock at midday using the maximum zoom on my camera. Yes, it's built upon an island. Over an island might be the best way to put it!

The lighthouse on Bishop Rock stands as a warning of the famous and notorious Isles of Scilly, just off the southwestern tip of England.


Bishop Rock was the eastern marker, the start or finish, of the timed route used by ships to determine how long it took to cross the Atlantic. Passenger liners would vie to claim the fastest transit. Even more famously, the Isles of Scilly were the site of the naval disaster of 1707, when four ships in a fleet led by Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell (a remarkable name) ran aground, with great loss of life, including that of Sir Cloudesley.

At the end of the most recent Ice Age, thousands of years ago, sea level was much lower and these islands were part of a single, much larger island. This "grand island" was repeatedly split as the sea rose and the islands slowly subsided, but as recently as Roman times the primary islands were still connected. As late as the 11th Century CE most of these islands were still connected at low tide. This image from Google Maps shows how the sea is still quite shallow; at low tide you can still see stone fences stretching out into the water.

Wouldn't you love to see a time-lapse movie of the last 10,000 years here?

The Explorer was here not to race, but to let us explore the Abbey Gardens on the island of Tresco in particular, and Tresco in general. She could not dock in the shallow waters, so we rode the zodiacs to a concrete landing. The Gardens are within walking distance, but transportation was available for those who wanted to conserve their energy for maneuvering through the gardens.

The morning was dedicated to exploring the gardens, while in the afternoon several options were offered: birding excursion, photography walks, beach exploration, exercise walks, or independent wandering.

The gardens were founded in 1834 when Augustus Smith took up the position of Lord Proprietor of the Isles of Scilly and began to build his residence on Tresco. He created the gardens for subtropical plants by building south-facing terraces and growing extensive belts of trees to shelter the gardens from the salt-laden winter gales of the North Atlantic. After some experimentation Monterey Pine and Cypress from California were chosen for the task, and later supplemented by evergreen oak (Quercus ilex). The gardens are still owned and managed today by his descendants, Robert and Lucy Dorrien-Smith.

The full complement of ship's passengers was divided into several smaller groups, each with its own guide. Our group's first stop was the vegetable garden. The Abbey gardens are primarily for flowers and trees, but our guide was the vegetable man and kicked off our tour there.

Our guide ...

Almost immediately we were greeted by one of the golden pheasants, tame, gaudy, and very popular with the photographers. With good reason.

He was prepared for his closeup. One toe on his left foot appeared to have been broken sometime in the past.

Artwork abounds in the gardens. Here is a sculpture of Gaia and a statue of the Dorrien-Smith children (now much older). Both were created by the artist David Wynne.

The first piece to greet us was this fountain.

Just above the fountain, at the head of the steps in the background of the previous photo, is the Shell House, a gazebo designed and crafted by Lucy Dorrien-Smith, decorated in sea shells.

There really was an abbey where there is now the garden; the name is not just a conceit.

But of course the main attraction for most visitors is the gardens themselves. I can't really summarize them, except to say that the plants come from South Africa, South America, New Zealand, Australia, Mexico, the Mediterranean basin, and other temperate to subtropical climates. Instead I'll give you a montage. Remember that you can click on a photo to enlarge it.

Some of the succulents are hardy volunteers that will grow in any kind of organic matter; an example is in the lower right.

The structure of this one deserved its own image.

All right, just one more.

This is how one of the higher, drier, and warmer terraces looked. Except for rare plants, the specimens in the gardens are not watered or individually protected by the gardeners; they must thrive or not on their own.

This agave from California loves the heat of the upper terrace.

Also at Tresco Abbey Gardens there is the Valhalla Museum of figureheads from ships wrecked at the Isles of Scilly. It is an outdoor museum with two sides of a square under roof:

It was fun to peruse, as you didn't know what would turn up next.

Then it was time to return to the Explorer for lunch!

From the front of the ship I took shots for a panorama of the several islands. Waves and wakes move too quickly between shots to line up perfectly.

After lunch Joan and I went on the birding walk. It was led by Richard White, a Lindblad naturalist, whose ability to spot and identify birds, marine mammals, and polar bears is legendary. When I am seeing a speck in the distance, Richard will identify its species, gender, and coffee preference. I exaggerate only slightly. The walk was engrossing, and we saw birds both natural and introduced, such as ring-necked pheasant, coots, partridges, mute swans, swallows, blackbirds (not one found in North America), European robins (also not the North American bird), and shelducks. I won't even mention the hordes of various species of gull. The observations through binoculars were worthwhile, but the photos from my point-and-shoot camera did not merit posting on this occasion.

This bench was welcoming for a few moments of contemplation on our way back to the landing.

 
Then it was time to reboard, and sail towards the town of Fowey (pronounced Foy) on the English mainland, where we would arrive in the morning.

Island Odyssey: 3 Days at Sea

Our three days at sea were more relaxed, without rushing through breakfast to catch an outing, but they were certainly not boring. You could attend presentations, photography skills sessions, concerts, search for wildlife from the bridge, have a massage at the spa (I did), and more.

The Explorer has an open bridge policy, and the bridge is a wonderful place to watch the ship being operated, search for birds and marine mammals, or just eavesdrop.

Here are some typical bridge scenes.

Here "Bud" Lehnhausen, our expedition leader, wearing the red cap, and Tom Ritchie, naturalist and expedition leader emeritus, confer on the bridge.

At various times on this voyage I captured images of different parts of the ship, and I'll present them here. First, the chartroom. A quiet getaway.

The top deck holds the library and the observation lounge, which also serves as an auxiliary dining room.

I neglected to take a picture of the main dining room, but just outside it is the "bistro," an overflow area that is also very convenient to the bar. Afternoon tea is also offered here.

One of the centers of life aboard ship is the lounge, where presentations and other events are held, and people frequently gather to read, knit, or otherwise enjoy any free time. In this first view you can see the center podium, where the ship, in its earlier incarnation as a Norwegian ferry, might have hung a disco ball.

Here is the perspective from near the podium to the bar in the rear.

Sometimes a special snack (tapas) would appear at the podium.

One flaw in the layout of this lounge is that all the fixed seats (there is a mix of fixed and partially swiveling seats) face the podium, while the multiple high-definition TVs used in presentations are along the sides. It is important to get to the lounge while there are still swivel seats available!

The cabins were comfortable and slightly larger than in the predecessor ship, the Endeavour, now performing duty for Lindblad in the Galapagos. This photo shows the section of our cabin containing the beds.

The two peculiar features of the Explorer are the irregularity of the three stairwells and the sparseness of outside connectivity (you cannot walk entirely around the ship on the outside). The front stairwell is needed to reach the bridge without going outside, for example, and you have to find a small stairway from the chartroom to make the final connection to the bridge. The first few days aboard are a learning experience!

Next is a photo looking down the middle stairwell, the one we used most, connecting the deck with the lounge and our cabin to the level of dining room and gift shop and, at bottom, the mud room. Note that there is a net at the bottom to prevent dropped objects from crashing into passers-by.

The new mud room is an order of magnitude better than the one aboard Endeavour. The zodiacs can load and unload from either side of the ship without a tall gangway to climb or descend, and there is a locker for each cabin, used during those expeditions (think Arctic and Antarctica) when you wear smelly boots and heavy coats that you would rather not store in your room. I created a rough panoramic photo of the new mud room.

That's enough about the ship. Let's move on to wildlife sightings. The Explorer was visited more than once by common dolphins, who enjoy playing in the bow wave. Even your humble amateur photographer took a couple of decent images!

The large pale orange object is the underwater streamlining bulbous bow of the ship.

Yes, you must lean far over the bow to take these pictures.

We were also visited by a merlin, a small falcon, who was hundreds of miles from land. There were two possible reasons for his arrival, to take a rest from flying, and to prey on any seabirds that were following the ship. After twenty minutes of excitement (among those of us on the bridge) he departed.

We also sighted a pair of fin whales and a minke whale, but they were far enough away that photography was challenging.

Always take your binoculars with you wherever you go!

To give you an impression of the variety of presentations during these three days here is a mere list.

• The Aging Brain, Part 1 (Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg)
• The Columbian Exchange (Tom Ritchie)
• Photography help sessions
• The Executive Brain (Dr. Goldberg)
• Oceanic volcanic islands (Jim Kelly)
• Documentary film Longitude
• A short course on navigation (Jim Kelly)
• Truth, Fiction, and the death of WOW! -- the changing face of photography (Kevin Schafer)
• King of Clarinet -- Benny Goodman (Geoffrey and Penelope Haydock)
• Crittercam work (Greg Marshall)
• History of the Isles of Scilly (Steve Blamires) 

On the cultural scene, Geoffrey and Penelope Haydock treated us to a concert during this stretch at sea.

I also like this still image from another concert.

And blessed by good weather, we enjoyed the sunsets at sea.

After three days on the waves, we were approaching the western entrance to the English Channel and the Isles of Scilly.

Island Odyssey: The Azores -- Faial and Pico

We arrived at Horta, the main town on the Azorean island of Faial, after lunch the next day. Off-and-on showers prevailed, but this did not deter our traveling pigs, Thelma and Louise, from taking in the view.

Horta is a major rest and resupply port of call for transatlantic yachts. In the days of wind-powered whaling, ships would depart the United States from New England with a skeleton crew and then recruit Azorean men to finish the crew. These men, at the end of a multi-year whaling voyage, would disembark in New England, which to this day has a large population of Azorean or other Portugese descent.

We boarded our buses for an island tour, and David Stephens, one of our naturalists, took a shine to this trash bin. I took the picture through a water-streaked window.

What tickled his fancy? The label ...

What was really meant was undifferentiated trash -- not aluminum, glass, or another recyclable material.

From a high point we had a view of the town and harbor during a brief pause in the rain.

The rain had eliminated the option of a more strenuous hike over old volcanic fields on the northern side of the island. Instead, we would travel to the site of the 1957-1958 Capelinhos eruption, where there is now a museum, which meant driving to the westernmost point of the island.

The guide on our bus was of Faial, and not a full-time guide. (Faial derives much less of its income from tourism than the largest island, São Miguel.) I don't know what his day job was, but he favored names and dates -- Sir Walter Raleigh captured and burned Horta in 1597 -- and not so much the natural history of the island. When we arrived at the Capelinhos volcanic site, the rain was blowing horizontally off the sea. Our guide did not make clear to the entire bus that there was a museum here, and many assumed the stop was merely an opportunity to view the volcano or the lighthouse in the rain, which they naturally declined.

Joan and I zipped our rain jackets and bashed on. At first there appeared to be snow or hail mixed in the rain, but it was too warm for that to be true; I later realized that the stiff sea breeze was sucking up small bits of sea foam and blending it with the rain. After perhaps 100 yards/meters we arrived at the entrance to the underground museum, built within the first two stories of the old lighthouse, which were buried in volcanic ash. It was a revelation.

We didn't have enough time to give each exhibit the time it deserved, nor were all the sections open this day (Monday). However, we were able to view a short 3D movie on plate tectonics and vulcanism, and an excellent holographic documentary that compressed the history of the eruption into one or two minutes.

For an American footnote on this volcano, I'll note that, with the ash having devastated agriculture on Faial, over 4000 of the island's inhabitants emigrated to the United States under special immigration exemptions promoted by Senator John Kennedy.

We returned to Horta, where, despite the best efforts of the Lindblad staff, the local guides had inadvertently arranged for at least three of our four buses to arrive at the small whaling museum simultaneously.

The museum was commensurate with the scope of the whaling activity in the Azores, which was a part-time activity engaged in by men who were otherwise farmers, shopkeepers, or dockworkers. A total of about 20,000 whales were killed in the entire history of Azorean whaling, compared to millions in the industrial whaling of the late 19th and 20th centuries. (Whaling stopped in the Azores in 1984 or 1985, when the markets vanished due to US and EU regulations.)

It is difficult to begrudge the Azoreans the whaling that occurred. Life was hard on the islands, and it was a source of income. Further, it was much more of a "fair fight," with men sailing and then rowing up to whales in open boats and throwing harpoons by hand, not iron steamships firing explosive harpoons from guns. Here is a picture of some whaling artifacts from the era.

Lindblad offered us a final activity, a free drink at Peter's Café Sport, the most famous bar in the North Atlantic. Joan and I were tired, and dinnertime was close, so we gave it a pass.

The weather prevented any organized excursions after dinner. Also, due to the unusual direction of the high winds, the port at our next destination, the island of Flores, was closed. The port at the neighboring island, Pico, is too small for the Explorer, and using the zodiacs was out of the question. Other options had been eliminated by a Portugese naval exercise and by a docked asphalt barge. Now, with plans A, B, C, D, and E all eliminated, the flexibility and resourcefulness of the Lindblad staff shone.

For tomorrow morning, there would be two choices. First, to stroll around Horta, and perhaps stop in Peter's Cafe Sport. Second, to embark on an expedition to the close-by island of Pico: to get there, arrangements have been made for the ferry to São Jorge to stop at Pico first for us. To return before lunch, a ferry has been chartered for just our group. The Pico group would visit a whaling museum in the village of Lajes do Pico, and a winery.



We started with an early breakfast and, for me, 25mg of meclizine due to an unfortunate tendency to seasickness and the obvious roughness of the seas. Here is our ferry.

The fellow in front was our pan-Azorean guide, who had been with us from the beginning of our Azorean visit at São Miguel. He was wonderful, a warm, enthusiastic man, and I wish he could have been on all our buses. And Joan and I think his name was Evaristo. (note to self: take some notes!)

I have no pictures of our crossing to Pico, and for good reason. The boat was gyrating through rough seas and crosswinds. I was concentrating on not becoming sick by sitting very still on the lower deck of the ferry, in fresh air, with my rain jacket keeping the spray off and the meclizine keeping my stomach settled. The ride lasted only 45 minutes, but I was relieved that it took no longer; the only times I have encountered rougher seas, I took two meclizine and lay down flat!

I also succeeded in keeping most of the spray off my glasses. Glasses wearers hate spots, and salt water leaves opaque blobs, not translucent ones.

Our bus brought us to the harbor in Lajes.

The whaling museum was a pleasant surprise, new and much larger on the inside than it looked on the outside. Joan and I could have spent much more time working methodically through its exhibits and artifacts than was allotted, forcing us to make choices about what to study and what to breeze by.

After we had been inside for a few minutes the attendant rushed in to tell us emphatically of a "No Pictures!" policy. I put my camera back in its case, but had already taken pictures of one of the highlights of the museum, a whaling boat built in the traditional manner. Every little part has a particular function.

Before leaving Lajes I noticed this sign. With whale killing unprofitable, tourism (and whale watching) is a nascent industry.

On our way back we stopped at the winery, a cooperative run by the island. They have a web site, which is in Portugese, but has some photos that are good regardless of language.

The gale-force Atlantic winds that frequently scour the Azores make growing grapes a challenge. At Pico they are not trained to grow high, but shelter behind low stone walls and spread along the ground.

Inside, modern stainless steel vats are used.

Only a low-volume bottling line is needed. I don't know how many cases a year they produce.

We happily accepted tastings of two of their several wines, what they called 'less dry' and 'more dry.' The 'less dry' would definitely be a dessert wine, while the 'more dry' might be more of an apéritif. These beverages had an amber, rather than purple, color.

Our return to Horta was bouncy but gentler than going over. Joan even journeyed to the upper deck for the crossing while I repeated my statue imitation on the open portion of the lower deck. We had lunch on the calmly berthed Explorer, which afterwards began sailing towards the northeast. We would now have three days at sea without landfall.