108 Boating New Zealand
named after the westerly winds that roar around the planet.
For years I’ve worn out guide books trying to identify the
Southern Ocean’s sea birds – royal albatross from wandering,
white-capped from grey-browed – without success. But one
DOC stafer is a seasoned twitcher (bird watcher) and captures
distant sea birds on his camera so we can enlarge them and pick
out their features. We spend hours in the cockpit huddled over
a guide book and I learn more from this trip than any other.
A key to successful recognition of bird species is learning the
“jizz” – broadly speaking, the way a bird behaves or lies.
At dawn a couple of days out of Bluf we motor between the
sheer granite palisades of Carnley Harbour, anchor of the DOC
hut on the southern side, and ferry the albatross folk and their
gear to the rocky beach. In balmier latitudes the harbour would
be a boating mecca – but I’ve seen the savage katabatic squalls
it generates spin a heavy, steel yacht around and blow her back
out the entrance.