Ocean Harbour

February 24

The M.S. ENDEAVOUR arrived in Ocean Harbour during breakfast, and we spent our entire morning here. This is a small, narrow, protected bay with steep sides that extends inland about a mile or so. This was a true expedition stop, for Ocean Harbour is seldom visited nowadays. It gave us a chance for some good climbing and hiking, and the conditions were excellent for kayaking. At one time, this was a thriving shore-based whaling station and quite a bit of material still remains from that bygone era. The station was set up here because of a large flat plain left over from an ancient glacier scour and abundant fresh water. The remains of a ship called the BAYARD are here, which should be especially interesting, because it has now become an important sea bird nesting site. She was a three-masted iron hulled sailing vessel built in 1864 (the masts were iron, too!), used as a coaling ship for the whaling station. Bayard lost her mooring at the coaling pier on the northern side during a severe gale on 6 June 1911.

The kayak trip was reminiscent of "Pirates of the Caribbean" except it was a little bit colder. We had the abandoned derelict ship, lots of soupy fog, and spooky noises. Turns out the noises were just variations on elephant seal burps, but still... The sea was flat calm and we enjoyed some excellent paddling around the Bayard and along the shoreline. After we finished our kayaking, we went ashore and explored the remains of the whaling station. There were lots of good rusty bits lying around, and in the midst of the debris were hundreds of fur seals - mostly pups and a good pile of wieners. We had to be careful walking around because the seal pups were trying out there fighting ability - as Tom said "playful aggressiveness." They were small enough that we could just laugh at their attempts to charge us, but a bite would have been quite painful, so we carried a walking stick and shooed them away.

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