WINE, DYNAMITE AND PENGUIN TOUR: 16th February 2017 On The Way To Antarctica

16^th February 2017

Woke this morning to the Expedition Leader on the speaker waking us all up and telling us to come for breakfast. He is going to be very irritating, Steve had decided.

After a rocky evening, the sea had been very kind overnight with just a gentle 4m swell, rocking gently for our first night’s sleep on the ship. As the morning wore on, the swell picked up and the sea sickness bags that are everywhere on the ship came into use. By the end of the day, everybody including the crew were sporting anti seasickness tablets, bands, gels, tablets and prayer to prevent the onslaught of the inevitable.

We were holding up well and our little patches behind our ears were doing a good job if we needed it and we were still eating and drinking.

1000 miles of nothing

By lunchtime there were only about half us there. Presumably, everyone else was in their beds wanting to die. The ship’s doctor was at full stretch handing out pills, patches, advice as well as injections for the ones really badly affected. In fact, looking around, you would probably be the odd one out if you didn’t need anything but we were determined not to let it get to us and it didn’t.

We had to hang on to some part of the ship as otherwise in heavy swell, we ended up running down corridors we didn’t want to go down or falling in someone’s open cabin door. We had already had 3 complete strangers in our cabin.

Although the swell was very high, the weather was beautiful, clear and sunny, and the air was crystal clear, so we ended up sitting outside with the whole observation deck to ourselves.

Drakes Passage - Steve topping up the tan.
After 30 minutes in this clear air he was burnt!

We had several talks from the experts on board the ship and there were many true experts to choose from. There was an in depth talk on Whales and some great footage of what they had seen. We also have the Scientists on board who are surveying whales, so all really interesting.

Not an hour has gone by without a lecture from a scientist of one sort or another. There is also a professional polar historian on board and his session was also really interesting. Not sure how he ended up as a Polar Historian when he comes from Florida !! Later, coming aboard from another ship, was a writer and videographer from National Geographic Magazine and like all of the rest, were very accessible to talk to and very interesting.

Open Bridge policy where you can go on bridge anytime
- Steve obviously in control

After dinner it was time for the bar with some of our fellow travellers, so a few night caps and then off to bed in our cosy cabin for a completely disturbed night sleep. .