Antarctica 2023
AT SEA AGAIN
Feb 14
With our last day at South Georgia scuttled because of the winds and high swells, we are now on our way to the Falkland Islands, that means another 3 days at Seas... Yay! Get out the wrist bands and ear patches.
I took a picture of a stuffed Wandering Albatross in Grytviken as I wasn't sure I would get a picture of one, and this morning dozens of the Wandering Albatrosses are flying around the aft of our ship. It is one of the largest species of bird in the world, and has the greatest known wingspan of any living bird (average of 3 Meters or 10 feet), it is also one of the most far-ranging birds. Some individual wandering albatrosses are known to circumnavigate the Southern Ocean three times, covering more than 120,000 km (75,000 mi), in one year. Other birds we saw throughout the day include the three smaller Albatrosses; Black-browed, Grey-headed and Lightmantled Sooty. Throughout the day we would also see South Georgia Diving Petrels, a White-chinned Petrel and a Snow Petrel.
Before lunch Saskia did a lecture on Antarctica’s forgotten hero Tom Crean, an Irish sailor who had done 3 Antarctic expeditions including the Shackleton Endurance expedition. In the afternoon we watched a BBC documentary on Antarctica narrated by David Attenborough. Pippa also did a lecture on Whaling which I didn't have an interest in seeing.
After the lectures, we went back out on the decks to watch the Albatrosses and Giant Petrels again.
Tonight we had Valentines Day dinner with Natalia and Christian again, we talked more about his antique cars and her baking. A doctor that bakes, that's a double skill set you don't often hear about. After dinner we came back to the room and the staff had left chocolates.
It wasn't the day we expected it to be, but it ended up being a nice leisurely day at Sea. Happy Valentines Day!
Feb 15
GPS Position: 52° 41,8 S, 46° 27.0 W
Wind: NW-6 • Sea State: Moderate • Weather: Foggy, slightly clearing mid-morning
Air temp: 6°C • Sea temp: 8°C
It was another Sea day, so we slept in and skipped breakfast.
It's a little foggy and a little chilly most of the day.
Adam did a lecture on his life at research centers; two years at Rothera Station in Antarctica and nearly a year at King Edward Point. A fascinating insight to being very isolated in an inhospitable part of the world.
Elizabeth has been doing research on whales and specifically the endangered North Pacific Right Whale. In her lecture insight into the IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species. It's the world's most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of biological species.
One of the things I haven't talked about is Ursula's life size fabric animal art, whenever we have seen a penguin breed, she has put up a handcrafted cutout of that breed somewhere in the lounge. It is part of her 121withanimals initiative, meant to educate children and make the animals they should care about more relatable.
We had lunch with a welsh couple today, and shared travel stories.
Sasha did a presentation on "How to get to Antarctica". It covered a lot of his history and how he got to go and spend four months on Novolazarevskaya Station in Antarctica. In his ‘Sasha’ way; honest, open, and straight from his heart he shares his personal adventure. He even adds his moment of fame (a short National Geographic film) about spending five years by himself as ‘minister of foreign affairs’ as the keeper of the ghost town of Pyramiden, a former Russian Settlement on Svalbard in the Arctic.
This was followed by Marcos, Fiona and Felicity joining forces for a miniseries lecture about ‘The Climate – Past, Present and Future’.
Tonight we had dinner with our Aussie father and daughter friends Jim and Frances. The whole trip we keep ending up on the same zodiac, so we may as well start eating with them too.
After dinner Pippa and Marcel hosted an Auction night for the South Georgia Heritage Trust, with an assortment of items from South Georgia, and some special crew donations. Early in the auction Norine bid on and won a South Georgia glass Tea Light.
Pretty quickly the auction got rolling, and Drunky decided to make his presence felt. He decided he wanted to win everything, apparently Drunky has some money. I started bidding on a chance to sit in the Captains chair, and he wanted it, staring me down... So I drove the price up, if he wanted it that bad, he was going to pay for it. As the night went on he kept doing the same thing on almost every item, making crass comments, trying to intimidate people, and letting them know he was going to outbid them.
The best comeback of the night was when Marcel was trying to raise the bid amount, he offered to include 'dinner with himself' along with the item. When Drunky dropped a high bid on it, Marcel exclaims to the crowd "Save me". Luckily for him someone did.
Some of the highlights included the saddest looking knitted penguin, described as being knit by a 90 year old Grandma with bleeding fingers, and a group of women from Mexico won the bid for a bedtime story with Sasha for £50. At the end of the auction a whiskey bottle, map with art, and a decanter all went for over £200 each. The auction raised a total of £3676 for the Trust.
The scariest winning bid was for an opportunity to do the Morning Wakeup announcement over the ships PA system, everyone is dreading what that will be like when Drunky wins the bid. We just have to wait.
We get some extra sleep tonight as we are turning back the clock one hour. Perfect timing!
Feb 16
GPS Position: 52º01,9’S / 053?38,0’W
Wind: S-6 • Sea State: Rough • Weather: Partly Cloudy
Air temp: 6°C • Sea temp: 10°C
We Rocked and Rolled all night long. The clocks went back an hour, so we had an extra hour of not sleeping well. What we experience is not yet a hurricane but very strong winds that create big swells. Hondius is rolling and the stabilizers do not help much.
Simon, Marcos and Marcel lectures are a multi-disciplinary series introducing the Falkland Islands. How do you do a lecture on the Falkland Islands that pretty much skip over the war in the Falklands?
Although not quite as many albatrosses as we saw a couple days earlier, there was lots of birds following the ship.
As we are heading to a new destination for landings, it's time for another Biosecurity check... vacuums, paper clips and scrub brushes are put to work to ensure our muckboots, Velcro, pockets and backpacks are clean.
Marcel gave us a Hondius history lesson, starting with the name Jodocus Hondius, who was a famous cartographer (mapmaker). Apparently most of the Oceanwide ships are named after mapmakers.
We got a behind the scenes overview of how the hotel aspect of the ship works from Hotel manager William, and then Head chef Bawa told us all kinds of secrets about how meals are planned, how food is chosen, and how they keep things fresh.
As we start looking ahead at the next days plans, Pippa let us know that there was 60 knot winds in Antarctica today, so reversing direction was a brilliant choice.
We had dinner with Jim from Australia, the doctor and her partner and Sasha. Frances would have joined us, but Jim won an auction item to have dinner with William and sent his daughter. While we are having dinner we watched hourglass dolphins jumping through the waves outside our dinner table window. The boat didn't tip when everyone rushed over to our side of the boat, we learned why in the days earlier lecture on the ship... balast, stabilizers, blah blah blah.
The after dinner entertainment was a Trivia Night hosted by Pelin and Sasha. Nobody invited us to join their teams, so we left and watched a movie on our in-room entertainment system instead.
It was a very long day/night with stormy seas, I felt better than our first few days at sea, but tomorrow we will arrive in the Falkland Islands and it will be nice to have our feet on the ground again.