Who’s the savage then?

We humans are always patting ourselves on the back to celebrate our brilliant technological advances and understanding of the world. This voyage to the Sargasso Sea – well, and a few thousand miles around it – is partly to get away from all that.

It’s not always easy. Sailors can be some of the most materialistic people around. They’ll soon bore you to death with lectures on space-age kevlar sailcloth, carbon spars, GPS-radar overlays, and their beloved, electricity-guzzling “systems.”

Thanks to some of that technology, tens of thousands of people can now go to sea in a way that even a couple decades ago, before GPS and EPIRB distress beacons, might have been considered too daunting. Yet despite the gadgets (and partly because of them) there are few sailors – almost none – with even half the expertise, let alone daring, of a Francis Drake or Columbus, seamen whose boats wouldn’t even be legal in some countries today.

So that’s why a stop on “Moon River” at the Ilhas Selvagens, or Savage Islands, was so refreshing.

The Selvagens, ruled by Portugal, are a bunch of arid, barely habitable rocks scattered in the Atlantic between the much bigger islands of Madeira and the Canaries. If you want a high-tech taste of their remoteness, try looking them up on Google maps. You’ll do a lot of zooming.

Zephyr and Looli heading back down to the cove of Selvagem Grande -- with the island's one dog, "Selvagens."

Human life clings tenuously here. Failed attempts at colonization on the largest island, Selvagem Grande, echo in the sad little stone walls and crumbling livestock pens. The only place name here celebrating a supposed historical event – and this one is as unconfirmed as they come -- is Caverna do Capitao Kidd, a large, wet hole where the pirate may or may not have buried treasure.

Portugal keeps two wardens on the main island, occupying a tiny house built in the one decent anchorage, where “Moon River” lay peacefully between surrounding rocks and swirling surf.

Manuel Jose Jesus and his warden colleagues are the humblest of occupants, knowing full well that without outside help they wouldn’t last long. Everything, from water to beer and good Portuguese olives, is brought on the once-every-three-weeks naval ship. Even in dire medical emergency, it would still take a minimum four-hour roundtrip helicopter flight from a base on Porto Santo, an island near Madeira.

“It’s lonely,” Manuel said, although he was not complaining – the last time one of these warden jobs came up, 150 people applied.

Manuel

The house at Selvagem Grande

But the real kings of the archipelago are birds called Cory’s Shearwaters.

Almost 40,000 Shearwaters live on the Selvagens. They face few predators and so are fearless. When we arrived, we found their chicks, which resemble stuffed toys in their woolly down, sitting impassively in a vast collection of tiny hillside caves, while their parents wheel overhead, gathering noisily ahead of fishing trips.

Within a few weeks, those same chicks would finish shedding their juvenile feathers and, after being starved by their parents for a couple weeks, emerge from their caves. Lean and sleek, they’ll be ready – miraculously – for a few flying lessons and the start of a migration half way across the globe into the South Atlantic summer. Next February, some of them will do the whole thing in reverse.

Cory's Shearwater chick -- cute, but awesome 

Mariners have spent millennia perfecting ways to turn masts and canvas into airfoils, but nothing tops the Shearwaters’ long, thin, angular wings, which ride the wind like miniature America’s Cup boats, gliding more than they beat. Similarly, sailors have struggled forever with the need to carry enough drinking water. Shearwaters have an app for that too – special nostrils that desalinate ocean water, allowing them to travel free from land almost indefinitely. Of course their navigational ability, crossing trackless oceans right back to the very nests they were born in, is every bit as good as GPS.

Sailors would do well to stand back in awe of these marvelous travelers, but it hasn’t always been that way.

The Selvagens and their population of Cory’s Shearwaters came under protection of a natural reserve only in 1971, ending many years of human predation. Voyagers came to collect eggs to eat, others to strip the birds of feathers for sale. Selvagem Grande was even used for artillery target practice – you can still find chunks of shrapnel. Between the humans and the rats they probably introduced, there were eventually almost no Shearwaters left.

Today, Shearwaters have reclaimed their fortress in the Atlantic, while Manuel and his comrades resemble mere doormen to a great building – intimately knowledgeable, ready to serve, protective, and present, though not resident.

When the Shearwaters set out this month on their incredible journeys to the coasts of South America and South Africa, the island will fall silent. Manuel says that’s when he really feels the loneliness of his job. When they make the return journey, the pleasure is equal.

“Sometimes we’re annoyed with them because of the noise when we want to sleep and we can’t,” the soft-spoken former soldier said. “But when they’re not here, we feel strange.”

"Moon River," alone in the anchorage.

We were sorry to say goodbye to Manuel. He looked after us with all the enthusiasm of a man stuck on a deserted island. When “Moon River” left, he waved to us, standing on shore alongside his scientist friend Hanny and the island’s pet dog Selvagens.

But we didn’t really have to say goodbye to the Shearwaters: catching the wind south, we were heading even deeper into their home.