We knew today would present challenging weather and expected some stiff winds overnight moderating later in the morning and therefore arranged for the morning weather radio schedule to take place at 7am rather than the usual 05:30 - wow a lie in for everyone!

They guys on the beach were up early packing and we on Pelagic were up at 06:30 to download and analyse the GRIB files. We are not offering any weather routing advice to the kayakers, just passing on the information that we receive in map or text format in a verbal format.

The kaykaers decided to leave their campsite at 07:30 and we were to give them an hours head start before leaving to shadow them on their corssing of Ice Fjord; however they moved so fast today that we never caught them up until the had landed to make camp at Elephant Cove where they had to sort out a technical problem with one of the kayaks. By that time it was blowing a good 30 knots outside so the 'fur seal warriors', as we have started calling the kayakers, decided to stay in the cove for the night.

That left Pelagic with an upwind slog to gain the shelter of Wilson Harbour, but once we were inside the harbour we found a relatively tranquil anchorage in a superb setting with the snout of the Schrader Glacier visible just to the south East of our anchorage.

We had not been on anchor for long when we received a call from the kayakers who were worried that we were having a tough time at sea as their camp site in Elephant Cove was being hammered, and sand blasted, by very high winds; they had had to tie everything to the rocks, including their 100kg kayaks, to prevent it blowing away. We could hear the wind howling around their tent on the Iridium phone call. It was strange to tell them that we were happily sitting at anchor in very little wind only three miles away (as the skua flies), but this is South Georgia and anything can happen yet tonight!

The forecast, once the wind drops sometime in the middle of the day tomorrow is fair for the next few days and we have our fingers crossed that the swell will moderate quickly and that paddling can start again in the morning.

Dinner was steak, and as it's Friday night, and five o'clock somewhere, we gave ourselves a ration of one beer each with dinner. Better not tell the kayakers about that just for the moment;)

this photo shows the fur seal warriors camp at Coal Harbour (sorry about the quality), you should be able to see the corral built from the kayaks to keep the seals at bay for the night, and the fur seals waiting around to reclaim their piece of beach as soon as the humans move on. Fur seals are aggresive towards the human invaders but the elephant seal weaners are dangerous to the kayaks in their own way too as at least one has been found snuggled up to a kayak, that it has mistaken for another seal, in the morning.