WEATHER: Sunny, freezing and windy – taking into account wind chill -20C
HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY: Seeing MASSIVE icebergs
BUMMER OF THE DAY: The cancellation of the mornings landing
WORD OF THE DAY: Patience and Persistence
Glittering white, shining blue, raven black, in the light of the sun the land looks like a fairy tale. Pinnacle after pinnacle, peak after peak, crevassed, wild as any land on our globe, unseen and un-trodden.
Roald Amundsen
Follow our journey at http://www.gadventures.com/marine/triplog-login/ where you can find our Daily Expedition Reports and other documents from our voyage. It also maps our itinerary and stops along the way, so you may find this of interest. You will need the following to get in:
Username: antarctica111107
Password: expedition
Today is Remembrance Day. 11/11/11 it marks the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month when World War I ended. The ship will be marking the occasion with a hoot of the ships horn and a 2 minute silence at 11.11am this morning to honor and remember all those lives that have been lost in conflicts. May you all Rest in Peace.
Our wakeup call was this morning at 6.30am. In the wakeup information given, it was extremely windy outside and that we had to stand by for further announcements for our morning landing this morning. It sounds a little doubtful, but the sun is out and the water doesn’t seem any rougher than what we have had the last few days. Breakfast was served between 7-8am and we were just waiting now for any announcements about the morning’s expedition. Well the call came through just after 8am, that with knots of over 25, not sure what that is in real terms, but the morning landing has been cancelled, or suspended to see what the wind will do. Susan (the Expedition Master) said patience and perseverance are the keys to Antarctica, and we were going to just hang around here for an hour or so, see if anything changes and then relook at the game plan and see where we go from here.
In an inhospitable place like this you just have to take the good with the bad, we got in a landing yesterday that we didn't think we were going to get, and this morning the weather just worked against us. So taking the good with the bad and keeping in mind we still have 6 more days down here, we will just sit and be patient and let Mother Nature decide what she wants us to do.
At 9.30am Kevin (the birdman) gave a lecture on the Penguins of the region. There are approximately 17 species of Penguins and most of them are found in the Southern Ocean. The Macaroni Penguins are the most numerous species in the world but only a small number of them actually breed in Antarctica. These are the guys that look like they have stepped straight out of the movie Happy Feet with the funky yellow feathers on the foreheads. We hope to see some of these, but they will be hard. The main species of Penguins we will see on this voyage are the group called Brushtail penguins. They include the Gentoo, Chinstrap and Adelie penguin groups. The Gentoo penguins we saw yesterday and there are approximately 314,000 pairs in Antarctica and are around 70-90cm tall. The Chinstrap penguins we also saw yesterday and there are approximately 8 million pairs in Antarctica and also the most common penguin found in the region. They stand around 68-75cm tall. The Adelie penguins we were supposed to see some colonies today, but due to weather this didn’t happen. They have approximately 2.4 million pairs and range in height from 70-75cm. There are more famous penguins like the King penguins and their counterparts the Emperor penguins but they are not this far north at this time of year and the Emperor penguins actually breed during winter and won’t be found here this time of year at all.
After the talk I wanted to go outside and checkout the state of affairs. The bow of the ship was closed but the upper decks were open, so bundled in my thermal, Colombia hoodie, beanie, and gloves I went up to the top deck to get some pictures of some icebergs that were in the starboard side of the ship (impressed). Once on deck, I could understand why the landings were cancelled. The wind was so strong you could barely walk properly without it blowing you one way or another. It was insane and also insanely cold, no insanely FREEZING!!! That damn wind chill factor was rearing its ugly head. I could only stay up there for about 10 minutes and then I HAD to come back inside. Getting back to the cabin my face was red from the wind, and I think it is wind burn. There have been a lot of people walking around the ship the last few days and their faces have look so sunburned, they are red as tomatoes and I think it is just the wind burn when we are out in the elements. I guess it doesn’t help that the hole in the ozone layer is also over Antarctica making us more prone to getting burnt down here as well.
The upside that is where we were going to land, Brown Bluff is normally quite hard to see as it is generally covered in cloud but this morning we had a gorgeous view with the sun in the sky. So it is quite rare to see Brown Bluff and we got a magic view, so there are small graces when you least expect them. It is also our first glimpse of the mainland of Antarctica. With the cliffs soaring 745m they are the remnants of an ancient volcano. There are also some icebergs around, so we were able to get some pretty cool photos of the area even if we couldn’t get off the ship.
So after an hour to enjoy Brown Bluff, it was time to make a decision and the Captain and Susan have decided to keep moving towards our next landing site to see if the weather, particularly the wind will improve as we go. The winds are varying between 30-50 knots, which I am not sure what that is converted, but after standing up on the top deck, it is bloody strong and can totally understand why they have made the call and not letting us off the ship.
Lunch was served at 12.30pm. It feels like we have just eaten and slept since we have arrived on the ship. Oh besides the landing yesterday, it IS all we have done. We’re getting a regular ‘table’ crew happening. We may not see each other around the ship so much, but we all know that we will catch up again over meal times. It’s nice. We had the pleasure of Jeff today; the Zodiac Master from Ontario, so we were able to shoot questions at him about the ship, the crew and the landings which he answered no problems. I find him a pleasure to talk to too…..
So the afternoon was free, watching the icebergs pass us by as we headed down the Antarctic Sound and into the Weddell Sea. We are all waiting with baited breath on news of the afternoon Expedition whether it will go ahead or not. I have spent a bit of time on deck today and the wind has really not let up all day and I could be nearly 89% sure that this afternoons landing will also be cancelled. Well at 3.30pm we heard word that the weather has not altered much and if anything has gotten a little worse and is forecast to stay like that for the next 48 hours. So Susan and the Captain have made a decision to head back the way we had come today exiting the Weddell Sea back up Antarctic Sound and then head further south to try and get as far away from the winds as we can. Sounds great to me.
We did get to see some massive tabular icebergs, called that because of their flat, table top profile. Keeping in mind the icebergs we see are only 10% of the whole iceberg, the main one we saw was approximately 1km on the diagonal on top of the water so imagine what the size of that thing is under the water. The temperature outside with the wind-chill factor thrown in was at one point -20C. I knew it was cold, but -20C!!!! Holy Moley!!!!
So the afternoon has been spent with people playing some board games from the library, some groups of guy’s playing cards and drinking some beers and there have been 2 lectures to which I have not attended. One, was we have 3 people on board who are hitching a ride to Port Lockroy for the next 5 months as conservationist and they told their story and then at 5pm Scott presented the tale of the race to the pole. I am sure that they are both interesting, but I just can’t be bothered today for some reason.
As Scott was staring his lecture I stopped by the bar and got 2 glasses of ice and headed to the cabin where Jules and I finally cracked one of the white wine casks and listened to tunes and read and I blogged the rest of the afternoon away.
I started to feel a little ‘off’ just before dinner. I would hate to say it was the wine, so I am sticking with I may be getting some effects of seasickness. I hate the feeling of that ‘spew’ feeling; but I just toughened up and went to dinner. I ate most of my dinner, but I couldn’t quite finish my spaghetti bolognaise and I passed on dessert, so you know I was feeling a little off if I pass on dessert. I went and jumped on the internet for the first time. I have held off and to be honest I knew it would be a nice little hiatus from the internet, but I was thinking of home and friends and wanted to see them all again, so I paid my 20USD for 10MB of download and thought I would give the connection a go. I know a few people have been trying to get on the last few days and have had no luck, but I didn't have much to lose. I think because it had been so windy the Wi-Fi signal just goes to the crapper. Anyway I logged on and I got a good 10 minutes checking Hotmail and knowing that I shouldn’t jump onto Facebook as that would definitely suck my MB, but I couldn’t help myself and with 25 notifications, I decided to not click on them, beside not having enough allowance, I wanted to have some MB left to write some emails tomorrow. At this point I was also feeling very dodgy. Like getting the watery feeling in my mouth when you know you’re going to be sick. I managed to get back to my cabin after logging out of the internet and then the feeling passed. Well as nature called I got the ‘spew’ feeling again and luckily the bathroom is as small as it is and the sink is right next to the toilet and I managed to throw up dinner in 3 fell swoops. Too much information? Yeah you’re probably right, but I was so thankful that I got it all in the basin, but I could see exactly what I had for dinner and unfortunately the spaghetti had clogged the sink and we had to get Kenneth and around 3 other people to come in and unplug my spew from the basin and get it all cleaned up. I felt so so so bad, but as Jules said, it isn’t anything they haven’t seen before. I suppose not but it is still a bad feeling that someone else is cleaning up your spew. I felt 100% better and managed to go to sleep no problems with Kenneth leaving me a sick bag by my bed and Jules offering to bring over the trash can in case I was going to be sick again and I fell into a wonderful deep sleep. I also took some seasickness tablets just to be sure and this probably helped me into Noddyland. Not sure if it was something I ate, the wine we opened or indeed it was actually seasickness. Either way it wasn’t pleasant and I hope I will be okay tomorrow.
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