Feat of Endurance Stimulus for Antarctic Surfing Safari

Of the bitter cold and blustery Antarctic Peninsula, Alexander Macklin once proclaimed: “A more inhospitable place could scarcely be imagined.”

Having arrived there 83 years later, Steve Hawk proclaimed it to be “stunningly beautiful--just shocking.”

Indeed, such a unique and surreal surfing experience could scarcely be imagined.

Macklin was a surgeon during what was billed as the British Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, an exploratory endeavor that began in 1914. He had lots of work, mostly amputating the frostbitten fingers and toes of fellow explorers.

Their sailing vessel, the HMS Endurance, trapped by ice as winter set in, drifted for 10 months before buckling under the pressure of advancing floes. Expedition members lived on the ice for an additional five months before escaping to Elephant Island in smaller boats they had been able to salvage.

They remained on Elephant Island--first they ate their sled dogs, then later survived on stew made from seaweed and dug-up seal bones--while Sir Ernest Shackleton, the explorer who led the expedition, and five others sailed 800 miles across the Scotia Sea to South Georgia Island. Shackleton, who made the first land crossing of that island to find help, led four relief expeditions before finally reaching and rescuing the 22 men he had left behind. Remarkably, all of them survived.

As for Hawk, life’s not so rough.

He and seven other surfers, along with the skipper and crew of the 65-foot sailing vessel, Golden Fleece, set out on a monthlong odyssey Feb. 1 from Ushuaia, Argentina--the southernmost city in the world.

After their first frigid session in shoulder-high left-breaking waves at Elephant Island on Monday, Hawk called The Times via satellite phone and remarked that this historic expedition, though it basically had just gotten underway, was sailing along smoothly. The night before, the surfers had enjoyed fine wine and a dinner of chicken sauteed in a creamy cognac sauce.

The waves were smaller than they had expected, but there are bound to be bigger days. Besides, Hawk said, surfing is secondary in a place so magnificent. Flanking the Golden Fleece was a 700-foot cliff, barren and black, almost shadow-like. The waves took them toward a blue-green glacier, rising 300 feet and spanning the mile-wide base of the bay, calving every half-hour or so, sending huge slabs of ice cascading into the sea.

Penguins, which lined the shore of Elephant Island, were porpoising through the lineup and hauling out on distant icebergs, looking like “black ants on blue Formica.”

“It’s an unbelievable place,” Hawk said. “It’s like surfing on the moon.”

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The so-called “heroic era” of Antarctic exploration led many pioneers to the bottom of the world in the early 1900s, in search mostly of scientific and geographic knowledge, but also of adventure.

They were hardy souls who endured brutal living conditions for weeks and months on end, without electronics or electricity, with only basic supplies for sustenance and survival. Those aboard Endurance, without doubt, endured hardships almost beyond belief and theirs is an incredible tale of human survival.

It was their plight, in large part, that inspired Mark “Doc” Renneker to dream up a surfing expedition to Antarctica. Renneker, 47, is a Bay Area physician and one of the more respected regulars at Maverick’s, a notorious big-wave break near Santa Cruz.

“He just got a wild hair and had to go to what he called the unsurfed continent,” Hawk said.

He got really serious about it after reading Alfred Lansing’s book: “Endurance--Shackleton’s Incredible Adventure” (Carroll & Graf, $12.95). The book, based largely on accounts of surviving members of the expedition, makes reference to large swells and shows old photographs in which waves can be seen peeling off rocky points.

With Hawk, a renowned Southern California surfing journalist, and Renneker are Keith Block, 48, a physician from Evanston, Ill.; Kevin Starr, 39, a physician from San Francisco; Art Brewer, 49, a noted surf photographer from Dana Point; Chris Malloy, 28, a pro surfer from Ventura; Sedge Thomson, 48, of San Francisco, and Edwin Salem, 39, of Costa Rica.

Captain of the steel-hulled sailboat is veteran Antarctic sailor, Jerome Poncet, 47, a Falkland Islands rancher who stocked the vessel with fresh beef and poultry, as well as homemade sausages that have been hugely popular, Hawk said, “for the meat-eaters among us.”

The surfers almost literally, then, are living high on the hog at the bottom of the planet. The Golden Fleece is well-heated and well-equipped, with state-of-the-art navigational equipment, a VCR, a satellite phone and even the capability to send and receive e-mail, which Hawk says makes all eight members feel closer to home.

Like so many great adventures of the last decade, theirs is being chronicled on the Internet with photos and dispatches at https://www.quokka.com.

But the shipboard comfort notwithstanding, there is the matter of 35-degree water to contend with. Block described the sensation in laymen’s terms, saying duck-diving here without your hood on gives you a “ten- to 20-fold worse headache than you’d ever get from eating ice cream fast.”

Even with customized dry suits, complete with hoods, the extremities get cold and, in some cases, numb. Daytime temperatures outside the water have been averaging about 40 degrees.

So far, only Hawk, Salem and Malloy have actually surfed. Malloy rode the first wave and thus was asked to name the spot. Caught up in the history of the island, he named it Blackboro’s Bubble after Perce Blackboro, at 18 the youngest member of Shackleton’s crew.

The Golden Fleece has since pushed on and Thursday was moving southwest along the Shetland chain, encountering rougher seas than predicted.

“We’re planning on making landfall again at Deception Bay, where we heard there was surf,” Hawk said. “We’re hoping to have a nice calm anchorage and a good meal--and hopefully we’ll be able to keep it down.”

FRESHWATER

* Santa Ana River Lakes in Anaheim are the exclusive new home to a new variety of rainbow trout called “lightning trout” because of their golden appearance.

About 2,000 lightning trout, said to have flesh similar in color and taste to salmon, were stocked Thursday night. The fish are a result of the efforts of workers at Mt. Lassen Hatchery in Northern California, who removed a male rainbow exhibiting a rare genetic color trait, cross-bred it with hundreds of females and ultimately produced golden offspring. Now they are able to do this with nearly 100% success and the concessionaire at Santa Ana River Lakes has exclusive buying rights.

“Unlike our regular rainbows, which are dark on top and practically invisible underwater, these things really stand out and you can see them several feet down,” concessionaire Doug Elliott says. “I would imaging that some of the fishermen are going to see them before they catch them.”

The lightning trout average one to 2 1/2 pounds.

SALTWATER

* Cabo San Lucas: Catch of the week goes to a pair of Idaho anglers who landed a small deer that somehow found its way out of the hills and into the Pacific. The anglers and their panga skipper lassoed the frightened animal and got it safely ashore. It ran toward the hills amid cheers from a crowd that had gathered to watch at the Whale-Watcher bar at the Finisterra Hotel.

“In the 16 years that I’ve lived here, I have never seen a deer down this low, except once on the highway and it had been hit by a car,” said Tracy Ehrenberg, owner of the Pisces Fleet.

* Big Bertha is back, and if you get your hooks into her, it could net you $25,000. Big Bertha is actually five tagged halibut that will be released before the start of the annual Santa Monica Bay Halibut Derby April 8-9. If a tournament entrant catches one of the tagged fish, he or she will then draw one of five envelopes. If the fish’s tag number matches the one in the envelope, it’s a winner.

In other words, don’t get your hopes up.

Prizes that will be won are trips to Alaska and Mexico. Cost is $50 a person. Weigh-in stations will be at Marina del Rey and King Harbor in Redondo Beach. Details: (310) 450-5131.

As mentioned here last month, the Marina del Rey Halibut Derby, featuring similar prizes but also a chance to win a pickup truck, is April 1-2. Cost is $60 a person. Entry forms can be downloaded online at https://www.mdranglers.com. Details: (310) 827-4855.

SHOWTIME

* The annual Southern California Boat Show begins a nine-day run Saturday at the Los Angeles Convention Center. More than 900 new boats will be featured. Admission is $9 for adults, free for children 12 and under. Hours are noon-9 p.m. weekdays, 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Saturdays and 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Sundays.

WINDING UP

Kay Packard of Los Angeles was visiting friends in Zephyr Cove, Nev., near Lake Tahoe and sleeping in a guest room last Sunday when a 120-pound mountain lion came crashing through the window.

Being from Los Angeles, she thought, naturally, that an earthquake had struck and pulled the covers over her head. She never saw the cougar, which “turned the room upside down” before making its escape, the homeowner said.

The big cat was found the next morning outside the house, perched in the branches of a tree. It was tranquilized and relocated by wildlife experts, who guessed that the cougar might have been attacking its reflection in the window.

* FISH REPORT, PAGE 13