{"id":281,"date":"2019-03-18T12:36:37","date_gmt":"2019-03-18T12:36:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.penguins-and-potatoes.co.uk\/?p=281"},"modified":"2019-03-18T12:36:37","modified_gmt":"2019-03-18T12:36:37","slug":"tristan-da-cunha-and-sa-agulhas-ll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.penguins-and-potatoes.co.uk\/?p=281","title":{"rendered":"Tristan da Cunha and SA Agulhas ll"},"content":{"rendered":"

The word Agulhas means different things to different people.\u00a0 To a geographer, Cape Agulhas is the most southern tip of the continent of Africa.\u00a0 Many people would think that Cape Horn is furthest south, particularly with its fame among the trading sailors of the 19th<\/sup> century who \u201cRounded the Horn\u201d on their way to India and the Far East.\u00a0 Presumably, as these vessels navigated around the southern point of Africa the biggest change of direction was when they changed course around Cape Horn, whereas the change of course just 80 miles later, around Cape Agulhas, was a relatively modest change of angle, prior to the ships running almost due east along what is now the Garden Coast of South Africa.<\/p>\n

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Bee and Alasdair at Cape Agulhas – to the left is the Indian Ocean, and to the right is the Atlantic<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Oceanographers will also know the name Agulhas after the Agulhas Current.\u00a0 This is a major south-flowing current which runs down the east coast of Africa, roughly from 27o <\/sup>to 40o<\/sup> south.\u00a0 It is a narrow strip of current close to the shore, varying between 30 and 100 km wide, and travelling at speeds averaging around 2 km\/hr but at its maximum reaching speeds of 9.3 km\/hr.<\/p>\n

The Agulhas that is connected to Tristan da Cunha is SA Agulhas ll, which is a ship that is well known on a global basis.\u00a0 The Agulhas is a South African icebreaking polar supply and research ship that is used as a platform for a wide range of tasks in the southern polar regions.\u00a0 The Agulhas is owned by the Department for Environmental Affairs, and is operated by SANAP (South African National Antarctic Programme).\u00a0 The link with Tristan is that every year the Agulhas passes from Cape Town to Tristan da Cunha, then she goes down to Gough Island 220 miles south of Tristan, where she carries out the change of the staff that are based on Gough for a year, dropping off one annual team and picking up the retiring team after their handover.\u00a0 The Agulhas then returns to Tristan, and onwards to Cape Town.<\/p>\n

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Agulhas in her home port of Cape Town<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On her way from Cape Town to Tristan the Agulhas takes a large quantity of cargo, and many passengers.\u00a0 Last September the passengers included the RSPB team travelling out to Gough to do work on the mouse eradication project, two new teachers coming to Tristan, a number of islanders returning to the island from medical visits in Cape Town, a number of scientists coming to work on fisheries, birds and seals, a retail specialist coming to help the Tristan supermarket for six months, a large number of visitors coming to celebrate the 100th<\/sup> birthday of their relative on the island\u00a0 –\u00a0 and Bee and myself returning from leave!<\/p>\n

The Agulhas has some big advantages for travelling out here compared with the deep sea fishing boats that are the other form of transport.\u00a0 Firstly, she carries two helicopters.\u00a0 One of the helicopters is used to take passengers ashore, which can be done even if sea conditions are stormy; thus there is virtually no risk of having to wait days on end while sea conditions allow the harbour on Tristan to be used.\u00a0 The next advantage is that the Agulhas is a large and powerful ship, and is able to stick to a schedule under almost any conditions.\u00a0 Visitors to the island are able to come ashore, and to have great confidence that they will be picked up 18 days later when the ship is on her return voyage.\u00a0 The third advantage over the fishing ships is to do with passenger comforts \u2013 the Agulhas has stabilisers, comfortable en-suite cabins, good food, and good facilities including a gym and a couple of bars!<\/p>\n

The Agulhas was built in Finland, and was commissioned in 2012.\u00a0 She is built to \u201cPolar Class 5\u201d and is powered by four 3,000kw Waitsila engines.\u00a0 Her ice-breaking capability is impressive, with a capacity to drive through 1 metre of ice at 5 knots.\u00a0 An interesting feature is that her decks are heated, in order to prevent any build-up of ice in polar conditions.\u00a0 The ship\u2019s stabilisers are interesting \u2013 being an ice-breaker she cannot have stabiliser vanes sticking out of the side of the vessel, instead she has water balancing tanks which are joined by massive pumps, capable of pumping water from one side to the other in order to achieve a balanced trim.<\/p>\n

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One of the main engines in the immaculate engine room<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The on-board machinery workshop – capable of any task<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The ship has a crew of 45, and accommodation for a further 100 passengers.\u00a0 With regard to her function as a scientific platform, the ship has 8 fitted laboratories and 6 further container laboratories, a library, as well as an auditorium for 100 people.<\/p>\n

Our crossing from Cape Town to Tristan was trouble-free, and we made it interesting since I managed to organise visits to the engine room and to the bridge.\u00a0 On the bridge we found the famous xylophone that is used as a dinner gong \u2013 it is a tradition on board that a crew member on the bridge announces meal times by playing a tune over the public address system!<\/p>\n

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The improvised dinner gong in the bridge<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Agulhas regularly carries out expeditions in the southern polar regions.\u00a0 One quite recent expedition, in February this year, was to go down into the Weddell Sea and carry out scientific studies, particularly on the giant iceberg known as A68, leading to greatly increased knowledge of the climatic influences from that area.\u00a0 One last mission, before the Agulhas left the Weddell Sea,\u00a0 was to launch an AUV (Autonomous Underwater Vehicle) in order to search for the Endurance, Sir Earnest Shackleton\u2019s famous ship which sank in November 1915.\u00a0 The mission was not a success \u2013 they were on station and began their search on 11 February, but on 14 February, with deteriorating weather and sea ice conditions, the AUV lost contact with her mother ship and the mission had to be called off and the AUV abandoned.<\/p>\n

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The Agulhas off Tristan da Cunha (viewed from our garden)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The settlement of Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, viewed from the Agulhas helicopter<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The word Agulhas means different things to different people.\u00a0 To a geographer, Cape Agulhas is the most southern tip of the continent of Africa.\u00a0 Many people would think that Cape Horn is furthest south, particularly with its fame among the trading sailors of the 19th century who \u201cRounded the Horn\u201d on their way to India … Continue reading “Tristan da Cunha and SA Agulhas ll”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geology-natural-forces","category-history","category-social"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.penguins-and-potatoes.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.penguins-and-potatoes.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.penguins-and-potatoes.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.penguins-and-potatoes.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.penguins-and-potatoes.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=281"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.penguins-and-potatoes.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":289,"href":"https:\/\/www.penguins-and-potatoes.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281\/revisions\/289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.penguins-and-potatoes.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.penguins-and-potatoes.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.penguins-and-potatoes.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}