Well folk, we’re finally in the business of counting penguins! And that involves getting up earlier than the earliest birds – yesterday the crew had us on the go at 1.30 am, motoring around the north side of Enderby Island. By 4 am the first five penguin watchers were doing their best commando impersonation over…

We arrived in the Auckland islands today! The forecast was looking promising on Monday so we set sail from Bluff at 9 pm, and had a smooth sailing, arriving at Enderby Island just on dawn, after an uneventful 31 hours. O joy and thanks to the weather gods for such a pleasant passage! After an…

I have a confession to make about this blog – I’ve prepared it in advance! And that’s because as you read this we are all at sea, somewhere south of Stewart Island but not yet at Enderby Island, which is our first stop. I can be much more precise about my own location – I’ll…

Wahoo – the weather forecast is looking more promising that it has for quite a while, we’ve finally all met one another, and we’re off! We’re a varied bunch, that’s all I can say. We range from a retired engineer to a mid-20s woman who works for Ravensdown and spends her days talking to farmers….

Eleven days in the subantarctic counting yellow-eyed penguins – up to four of those days will be spent on a 25-metre yacht at sea, getting there and back. So the big question is – what to pack? And how do curious sealions come into it?Factors to consider: the weather (cool, wet and windy) shore landings…

The Auckland islands lie at latitude 50° south, 460 kilometres south of Bluff – that’s just beyond the Roaring Forties and into the Furious Fifties! They’re imposing rugged chunks of rata-covered rock, the largest of New Zealand’s five groups of subantarctic islands. The weather is usually bleak: gale-force winds are the norm, temperatures seldom make…