Cuverville Island and Wilhelmina Bay
As our landing this morning has been delayed while the captain searches for an acceptable alternative to Orne Harbour (due to gale force winds and too much ice at the landing site), it's a good opportunity for a few words about The Ordeal. This is Charley's term for preparing to go out on the zodiacs for landings or cruising. Add ingredients in order listed:
2 pairs of heavy socks
Long underwear
Regular pants
Rain pants
Heavy rubber boots supplied by the ship
Stuff pants inside the boots, except for the rain pants which are pulled over the boots
Long sleeve shirt
Winter coat
Expedition coat
Life jacket (make sure the hood of the coat is pulled free)
Backpack
Hat
Gloves
Sunscreen
Chapstick
Sunglasses
Camera
Towel to keep camera dry
Boat ID card in sleeve window of expedition coat
Hope you remembered to use bathroom before you started The Ordeal.
Then you wait for your boat group to be called, hoping you timed it right so that you don't get overheated waiting to board.
It took a few tries to figure out the optimal order, but now we're fairly efficient. And The Ordeal is quite effective in keeping out the cold
---------------
The captain found a landing site at nearby Cuverville Island, which had been a possible location for tomorrow. It's on the scenic Errera Channel, filled with small icebergs pushing up to shore. Pods of whales accompanied us into the channel and could be seen spouting and surfacing throughout our stay. The area is relatively shallow and the Midnatsol could not anchor, but the tender crews got their job done safely.
The approach to the island was a scenic obstacle course of ice. The island has 5000 Gentoo penguin breeding pairs, one of their largest rookeries in Antarctica. There were a few fur seals on the beach, and many skuas hoping to grab a penguins chick. They were quite bold, sitting amidst the Gentoos, hovering above the chicks, and dive bombing into their protesting masses.
While, fortunately, we didn't witness any successful raids, we did see evidence that the predators are occasionally successful.
We grabbed walking poles and climbed up a long hill of ice and rocks to take in the views and see the rookery at the top. It's a long slippery walk down to the sea for the little Gentoos to catch krill to feed themselves and their chicks. (Those are people on the beach. The penguins are too small to see)
Back on the beach, we found whale bones and lots of ice floes.
The expedition team kept heaving away chunks of ice from the shore so that the tenders had an access point to pull onto the beach for landings and pickups. Once again, thank goodness for our rubber boots. The Gentoos took notice of the team's work, appropriated the opening and beached themselves there when returning from their feeding excursions.
This afternoon we cruised to Wilhelmina Bay where we planned to do tender cruising. The weather turned very misty, so that was cancelled and the ship cruised on, looking for whales. This was successful, with several small pods swimming around the ship delighting the passengers through the afternoon and dinner.
We had a lecture this afternoon on sea ice and terrestrial ice. Fun fact: If the ice on the Antarctic peninsula all melted, it would be a peninsula no longer, but a chain of islands.
This evening, they screened part 1 of Shackleton in the amphitheatre. It was topical to see it when we've just seen much of the same scenery and conditions.
Tonight we are headed north, back to the South Shetland Islands for our last Antarctic landing: Deception Island. The seas are much more pronounced than they've been while we cruised around the Antarctic Peninsula and adjacent island. So it's back to the transderm patches for Greg and me, just in case.
No comments:
Post a Comment