Albatross Mission

Skip Novak’s final adventure on pelagic Australis was a mission to save the Albatross

I let go the lines at the pontoon in Cape Town and watched Pelagic Australis motor out of the basin, breathing a monumental sigh of relief. She was bound for Marion Island, 1,400 miles to the south-east of Cape Agulhas, a tiny sub-antarctic particle in the southern Indian Ocean. It was September 2020 and the success of this voyage would save the Pelagic Expeditions charter business from pandemic-induced bankruptcy, but getting to this point had not been easy.

It had been a cliffhanger right up to the moment of departure. For Marion, a strict 14-day quarantine and testing of the team to protect researchers and base personnel already on the island was fundamental, in addition to a quagmire of permit applications. Now it was up to crew Chris Kobusch, Dion Poncet and Juliette Hennequin to get film and research teams down to the island, off load three tonnes of kit and then stand by helping them film for the next six weeks. Theirs was the easy part, dealing with the relative simplicity of a cathartic ocean.

“To be truly challenging, a voyage – like life – must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest. Otherwise you are doomed to a routine traverse.” I’ve often quoted that one from Sterling Hayden as I find it highly amusing and spot on, but it is even more relevant when you have extracted yourself from a financial pickle, such as we often find ourselves in the yacht charter business, with the risk magnified beyond all proportion during Covid.