Ship Day 12: Antarctic Peninsula

December 9, 2016       (reprinted from allisonwanderssome.wordpress.com)

 

The weather was against us again this morning. At 5:30am the fog was so thick you couldn’t see a thing, by breakfast at 7:30am the visibility had strengthened but a light snow had started falling. By our 9:00am launch time this turned into thick, wet snow.  Luckily the anchorage at Half Moon Island was protected and it was a short tender ride in to shore.  Just as I was boarding the zodiac word came from the island that an Emperor penguin had been spotted! This was extremely exciting as they are very rare this far north, their usual habit is a couple hundred miles south of here and few of the expedition staff had seen one, even fewer seeing one on land. Most of us then hurried from the landing beach up and over the snowy hill to the “emperor’s” beach. Luckily this site is frequently visited so there’s a human-made trail to follow, as well as walking on the “penguin highway”.  It’s very difficult for the little guys to navigate deep snow so it’s best if we don’t trample willy-nilly through the snow creating deep pockets as they might not be able to get themselves out of our deep post holes! They’ve made their own pathways in the snow so we sticked to those unless we were interfering with their movements. This is the island, however, for Chinstrap Penguins, 3,341 nesting pairs to be exact. They’re extremely photogenic what with the contrasting black stripe under their white chins and are quite small, which makes them adorable.

the Emperor penguin.  An adolescent far far from home

Our intended destination after lunch was Deception Island, a volcanic caldera that’s collapsed on one side so we can cut through the narrows and cruise into a protected harbour. The volcano is still active with the last eruption in the early 1970’s which caused a mudslide which covered some of the old whaling station left on one side. The hydrothermal vents are active along the shoreline which heat up the water and that’s where the boats do their ‘polar plunge’. I say all this in the 3rd person as we pretty much saw none of this as we encountered a snow blizzard with 46 knot winds in the bay, so bad I could hardly see the ruins of the whaling station on land. Obviously a zodiac landing was impossible so we all gathered in the bar and Thomas gave an impromptu talk on the history of the island and what we should be seeing and we all drank hot tea or hot chocolate and scarfed down the huge cookies they served up. It ended up being a pleasant way to spend the afternoon.

Ship Day 11: The Antarctic Peninsula

December 9, 2016              (reprinted from allisonwanderssome.wordpress.com)

 

The one day I didn’t get up early there were tons of icebergs passing by our ship! Normally I’m up at least an hour or more before our wake up PA announcement but this morning I thought I’d try to go back to sleep to pass the time. And this is what I was missing:


During the night we had repositioned to the tip of the peninsula and our morning stop was Kinnes Cove.  This was a zodiac cruise and we were warned that it was cold, to wear everything we had! That meant 3 pairs of socks, 4 layers on the bottom, 6 on top, and 3 hats for our 2 hour cruise. I felt like a stuffed sausage and it was very difficult to bend over to put my boots on! I’m going to have to cut down on the buffets!! I never did learn the actual temperature but the wind made it positively frigid. I did well until the end when my toes and fingers got a little chilled, but nothing too bad. The highlights of this stop was seeing the Adelie penguins, a couple of crab eater seals, and the many icebergs. Julia the lovely fiddler greeted us as we returned onboard with delicious cups of hot lentil soup! This crew really is spectacular.





Lunch was an easy burger buffet, followed by a nice 2 hour cruise to our next would-be landing site: Brown Bluff, but as is typical in the Antarctic anything can happen.  Here the sea ice was so thick it was blocking our access to shore. Nate and the captain had a quick discussion and decided to try another site so we steamed to Active Sound where we encountered katabatic winds gusts of up to 50 knots! The winds may be light on one side of the mountain but as they are pushed up and over the top, the differing pressures between the cold air above and the warmer below cause the wind speed to increase exponentially. Obviously this was too dangerous so we continued on to an unknown site on Joinville Island.



Nate had a compendium of scientific research done on wildlife colony counts throughout the Antarctic so he knew there were penguins somewhere on this coast so with some good scouting skills and luck we found what we are calling Nate’s Landing. Herewithto unvisited by any excursion vessel before, we first cruised by the face of a nearby glacier, then landed at an icy, rocky beach that was dotted with Gentoo and Adelie rookeries. It was hard to take a bad picture as the penguins either sat on their eggs in their rocky nests or set about tending to their nests. They are constantly building up their nests to protect their eggs from melting snow so they’re on the constant hunt for just the right sized rock, even if it means stealing it from another nest! Those birds not breeding were busy, busy marching somewhere. Up & down the rocky coast, even high up the snowy cliff they’d march on some little mission.



We didn’t return to the ship until 7:00 pm so it was a bit of a rush to get to dinner at 7:30pm but it was nice actually not to have to wait long because no matter how much we eat, we’re almost always hungry! It was a passenger’s birthday so the penguin express delivered a birthday cake!

Ship Day 10: Elephant Island

December 8, 2016     (reprinted from allisonwandderssome.wordpress.com)

 

Elephant Island is famous historically as the place from which Ernest Shackleton set forth with 5 other men on his 800 mile open-boat journey to South Georgia to find rescue. The island is very inhospitable and it’s rare to be able to actually land ashore, which proved to be true today.
We arrived at the island just as lunch was finishing so they told us to leave the table after our main course (yes, we’re still having 4-course meals), to dress warm and head up to the bow to view the island and they’ll bring dessert up to us!

Unfortunately the fog was thick as pea soup and we couldn’t see a thing but the crew was great: tables were set up to serve us our warm chocolate bread pudding with caramel sauce and a cup of hot chocolate with a nice splash of Bailey’s, and they had music playing which had a few guests doing the Twist and Simon, the birder, stripping down to his shirt doing….well, I’m not quite sure what Simon was doing.


As we headed out the rest of Elephant Island cleared out of the fog so we at least got a quick glimpse of the unforgiving terrain and our first true sighting of the Antarctic region.

A competitive and raucous trivia contest started in late afternoon which was compromised of questions garnered from our past onboard lectures which really showed who was actually paying attention in “class”. Our team, the Growlers, were so close on so many questions but ended up square in the middle of the pack. The Def Leopard Seals squeaked out a win in a Sudden Death round. The prize was mostly bragging rights as the bottle of wine they presented wouldn’t go far in a team of 8 members!

Ship Day 9: At Sea

December 8, 2016          (reprinted from allisonwanderssome.wordpress.com)

 

The seas turned a bit rougher during the night, it’s hard to guess but they’re perhaps 7-10′ rolling swells, but confused and the frequency of which is what pitches the ship’s nose into the bottom of a wave every now and again and green water crashes over the bow and the shudder is felt throughout the boat. In the calm seas from the Falklands to South Georgia we were able to make 14 knots but in these seas our speed is only about 8-9 knots so we won’t arrive in Elephant Island until late afternoon tomorrow. In one of our lectures we learned that making a landing at Elephant Island only happens very infrequently due to rough conditions so if we only get to do a zodiac cruise that’d still be fine.
By lunchtime the wind had abated some and the seas a little less rough so the captain was able to push up our speed to 11 knots so perhaps we can reclaim some lost time.  This morning’s lectures didn’t appeal to me so I spent a lazy day reading either on my bunk or in the lounge.  After lunch we had another mandatory bio-security meeting, this time for Antarctica and another vacuuming party in the Mud Room to rid our outer gear of any seeds or grasses that might try to hop a ride to a new locale.



Last night at dinner we spent a lot of time chatting to Franco, the guide who hails from Sudbury, about his trips to the Arctic with OneOcean so today at Afternoon Tea he was kind enough to show us one of the presentations he does on polar bears and how climate change is altering their habitat. Shortly after Nate gave a sail plan update and with the calmer seas we’re now ahead of schedule and due at Elephant at noon tomorrow! We’ll have a chance to see the island, if not actually go ashore. Then we’ll head over to Bluff Hill on the tip of the peninsula and be able to actually step foot on the “last” continent! I hadn’t really thought about it but it will be my 7th one!

Ship Day 8: At Sea

December 8, 2016 

 

Daily Trip Note

It was an uneventful night, with the ship rocking a bit more that we’ve become accustomed to but nothing that interrupted a great night’s sleep. I was awake at 6am so I tiptoed around the cabin and snuck out at 6:30am to have an early coffee up in the bar. There were few other passengers around so it was a lovely peaceful start to the day.

We resumed our sea day routine of eating lots punctuated by lectures. Not quite as many turned out for the morning two talks as perhaps might have if the seas were calmer, but definitely more than I expected.

Vomit bags placed throughout the ship

Rough seas seen from the bridge

Ship Day 7: South Georgia

December 8, 2016             (reprinted from allisonwanderssome.wordpress.com)

 

Conditions were once again ideal for an otherwise tricky landing so we had another 4:45am wake up call to catch the early morning light at St. Andrew’s Bay. At 5am a light breakfast of coffee, fruit, croissants and cereal was served in the bar with a 5:30am boat launch time. The promise of the morning sun quickly faded into a grayish day so I dawdled a bit to once again avoid the crush in the Mud Room. 82 people bumping into each other while trying to put on their clumsy boots and tight-fitting life jacket make it a bruising scramble, and as the light wasn’t as good it wasn’t a hurry for me to get ashore.

St. Andrews is not regularly visited due to its’ swell but it’s magical when seen due to its gazillion King penguins. Generally it’s just the nesting pairs that are counted (60,000) so when you throw in the juveniles and the babies it could even reach as high as 500,000 total penguins.  Elephant seals dotted the beach and as you never want to get between them and the sea upon landing we headed straight for its inland edge, then turned left to parallel along it to the small hills at the far end to view the parents and growing chicks.

The chicks are born in February but need 11 months to grow before taking their first swim so the large fluffy brown birds we saw are still totally reliant on their parents for food. They herd together in large numbers in what’s called a crèche for protection from the skua birds and other predators and their parents have to search the masses to find their baby.  They speak and call each other in their unique voices until they find each other so the air was filled with chirps and squeaks and trumpet calls.  We watched as they pestered their parent (the mom and dad share the feeding duties) with nips and squawks until they coughed up a meal!


Gail was on one of the last boats to return to the ship and hers was the most exciting of the trips – they got swamped trying to leave the beach! The boat got turned sideways a bit and a big wave came in over the stern knocking her and another passenger to the floor of the boat and her lifejacket inflated in the foot and a half of water swirling around the bottom. Luckily she wasn’t hurt nor any camera equipment damaged but some other guests had not put their gear away properly and some was ruined! The staff had warned us that everything should always be tucked away in waterproof bags when aboard but it’s easy to become lackadaisical about it.

Our lesser excitement was seeing a couple of leopard seals prowling around a rocky point covered in penguins. Leopard seals are quite vicious hunters, there’s reports of them even tracking humans from under the ice, but besides giving us a good look over, these guys were more interested in catching a penguin unfortunate enough to go for a swim. In fact, we did see half of a penguin pelt floating in the water. The leopard seal grabs its prey and shakes it so violently it rips apart and the seal then eats it from the inside out. Luckily, or not, we didn’t see that!

The kitchen staff had a wonderful big breakfast buffet with fresh croissants, mini quiches, eggs, and lox & bagels, fruit, etc. for us at 10:30am and that set us up nicely for a well-looked forward to nap while the ship repositioned for our next excursion.

Afternoon Tea was a substantial savory one as we didn’t have lunch: 5 kinds of soup, pizza rolls, and leftover wedding cake; then a 2:45pm call to the boats. They had hoped to do a shore excursion to see the nesting Macaroni penguins but the fur seals on the landing beach at Cooper Bay were too aggressive so the plans morphed into a zodiac cruise.  Gail, Sheila and I were quite happy to have Nate as our zodiac driver as we had full confidence in his tender driving, he’s a wealth of knowledge having been here loads of times, and he’s a happy chappy to boot. 

Our time in South Georgia was now at an end and the captain turned the ship south-southwest during dinner and we started making our way to Antarctica. The winds were picking up, the swells were greater and we were already seeing big icebergs that had already made the years-long voyage from there, a trip we hope will only take 2.5 days. We could barely keep our eyes open after a delicious clafoutis dessert so it was right to our cabins for an early bedtime.