The morning started with our ship in Royal Bay. The weather seemed very promising with clear blue skies. What we couldn't tell from inside the controlled atmosphere of the ship was the strength of the winds. And strong they were. Gusts up to 59 knots. The limit for safety if out in zodiacs is 30 knots. So we wait.
From the deck of the ship, we could see along the shoreline, what we thought were lots of white rocks. On closer inspection with the binoculars, the white "rocks" were thousands of king penguins. We should have twigged sooner as there was an interesting "whiff" in the air.
We spent the morning while waiting, watching several albatrosses circling our ship.
By late morning, the decision was made to sail on to Gold Harbour. Once there, it was all hands on deck. All the zodiacs were going to be used to investigate the shoreline where we could see thousands of penguins, even from the deck of the ship. There were apparently perhaps 35,000 nesting pairs.
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