18th – Thar she blows!

The plan was to be woken up at 0600 but waking up past that and not having heard anything I assumed I just had slept through it. My cabin mate had left and I showered, when exiting he returned and informed me that the wakeup had been moved to 0700 instead.

What had happened was that after I had gone to bed around midnight the captain had sailed us through 3 hours of ice. Carefully getting us through, hitting ice in an attempt to move it aside (as the ship isn’t an icebreaker moving ice to the side is pretty much the only thing the ship can do unless the ice is weak enough to crumble when we hit it). There was no real option of turning around as the ice was being blown into the strait from the south so that had resulted in a couple of fairly stressful hours. The original plan had been to go to Neko Harbour but there was too much ice to get there so instead they changed course and took us to Cierva Cove instead. From here we did a zodiac cruise among the many ice bergs. As a small bonus we went by the Argentine base Primavera where we did an improvised 5-minute landing before continuing on. Why was that so special? Because by landing there we actually set foot on the actual mainland of Antarctica. This was likely our only chance of not just being on islands but on the actual continent. Other than that it was a landing like all others. When not on a cruise we had a presentation by one of the guides who could show and tell how life is on an Antarctic base when you over winter.

Proof I have set foot on mainland Antarctica.

A beautiful iceberg a fair bit away from the ship. 

After lunch we relocated to Mikkelsen Harbour where we did some cruising and a landing. Some of us got into a zodiac to do some science stuff where water temperatures and wind speed were measured before coming ashore. Here we saw more penguins (surprise!) seals and a large (dead) isopod.

The guide Dr. Annette Bombosch introducing us to science stuff.

The water temperature measuring thingie is put into use.

(yes, "thingie" is the scientific term).

The wind speed is... uuh. It is.. uhm... 0.0 m/s. Whew, science is hard!

The isopod on display.

Leopard seal.

Coming back to the ship we had dinner and we started moving on to the next stop; Deception Island where those who want can do their polar plunge. Deception Island is basically a caldera of a still active volcano. There is one entrance into the bay which is fairly narrow with a large submerged rock, so if the weather isn’t good enough it will not be safe to enter. We’ll see how it goes. From there on we will sail east and aim for the Weddell sea; we have 3 full days still before having to return to the Drake on the 3^rd night so we still have plenty of time to sail around and find more stuff to see.

The waters tonight are not quite as still as the previous couple of nights but relatively to what one should expect the conditions overall have been amazing.

The night ended with the ship’s band Monkey Eating Eagles playing. Moods were high and there was certainly some crazy dancing going on at times. Nothing seemed to be able to end things until somebody yelled “whale!” and everyone ran out to have a look. Minke or fin whales in the surface in the beautiful sunset. Still no breaches but as the captain started circling we did get close enough to hear them breathe. 

The Monkey Eating Eagles.

Sunset.... 

... now with more whales!