South Shetland Islands

Ship Log

Greetings from Vernadsky Ukrainian research base! At 65 degrees south, the furthest point south we'll reach on the trip. Lovely sunny and warmish day - just visited the base and sampled their vodka.

Wonderful trip. Very lucky with the weather, often very clear allowing great vistas. Seen many penguins, seals and today humpback whales in the Lemaire Channel. Four more days in Antarctica before Drake 2!

Amazing first week in Antarctica, taking in the South Shetland Islands - Barrientos, Edinburgh Hil, Yankee Harbour, Half Moon Island - Deception Island in the Bransfield Strait, Trinity Island and finally reaching the continent proper at Neko and Paradise Harbours, having followed the coastal islands and seen Enterprise and Cuverville Islands in the Gerlach Strait (Belgian names abound here! Weird seeing Anvers, Brabant, ... populated by Penguins!

Thursday 3 December, from Barrientos Island to Yankee Harbour & Half Moon Island

• 12h00: 62°32.7 South / 059°53.2 West
• Yankee Harbour: 62°31.6 South / 059°53.2 West
• Half Moon Island: 62°35.5 South / 059°53.7 West
• 20h00: 62°35.2 South / 059°52.9 West

03h45: anchor watch from 2am through to 4am. Quite a few duties, the main one being to ensure that the ship does not drag from anchor and that no icebergs are on a collision path with us. On watch with Kelvin, a Canadian who is making a film documentary of a travel from Antarctica to the Arctic. He filmed part of the watch, well briefly. It is cold, windy but otherwise fine. Signing off as too early in the morning to write more.

18h00: Another full day of island touring and landings – and it is not yet over. Having worked the anchor shift, I quickly returned to my bunk to catch up on much needed sleep. Saying that, sleeping in Antarctica sometimes feels like time wasted as you never know what you might be missing outside! Today was a case in point as I knew the Europa was due to weigh anchor at 6am and head off to our next landings. So come 9am it was a case of dragging myself out of bed for breakfast and another day in Antarctic paradise! Our itinerary today has taken us around the coast, heading away from Barrientos Island and in the direction of the larger Livingstone Island. We were making two landings at Yankee Harbour and Half Moon Island.

Ahead of these trips, we took a detour from our programme to visit the aptly named Edinburgh Hill – a huge volcanic rock standing high and majestic at the end of a large bay. Approaching the Hill is an amazing experience as the Europa has to steer through a relatively extensive icefield.

As small bergs passed by there was an audible crackle sound as the ice reacted with the water. It felt as though the ice had all originated from the promontory and the glacier behind it. The rest of the morning was taken up with reading in the library, both my book on the natural history of Antarctica and checking the charts indicated our journey around the Peninsula islands.

Around lunchtime we anchored across the bay at Yankee Harbour. The harbour is named after American sealers who established a temporary refuge there at the height of the sealing trade. Europa is one of the few boats which can actually enter and anchor in the harbour. It is protected by a spit of land on one side and mountains on the other.

A penguin colony is located at the foot of the mountain while a mixture of seals can be found on the spit of land, mainly Weddel and Elephant Seals. The spit of land also serves as a penguin super-highway, as the gentoos and pin-straps continuously make the trip back and forth to sea to feed.

One partner always remains at the nest to keep the egg warm, so this task is shared. Another first sight – at close-up – was the build up of ice, swept alongside the windward side of the spit.

Part of the beach was still a frozen puzzle of beached icebergs, broken ice and frozen sea water! Walking across this was a surreal experience.

Later on we motored around to Half Moon Island. This is a relatively small bay, with an Argentine research base on one side. In previous years, the Europa crew has been welcomed in for hot drinks and chocolate, but we arrived too early in the season – they have not yet arrived.

A group of us made a landing after dinner, to visit some of the bird colonies. The little black birds we went there explicitly to see duly turned up, returning from a day’s fishing at sea. They are storm petrels and are very small, as my attempts at photographing them revealed! It was a cold end to the day however.

The wind was blowing and it felt a lot colder than this afternoon – admittedly it was past 9pm by then! We hurried back once the sun set in, but some of the views looking over the bay to the far side of where we are moored were pretty sensational.

Wednesday 2 December, Barrientos Island

• 04h00: 62°03.6 South / 060.14.1 West
• 08h00: 62°18.2 South / 059°52.5 West
• 12h00: 62°27.0 South / 059°.41.5 West
• 13h15: Barrientos Anchor: 62°24.6 South / 059°44.5 West

Arrived South Shetland Islands in the night passage. Our watch scheduled for 4am was cancelled as the permanent crew took over the running of the ship at this point. This raised no objections from Red Watch when it was announced via the preceding watch. Getting up at 7h45 we awoke to our first proper Antarctica morning and the view was simply splendid.

Our course was set for Barrientos Island, part of the Aitcho Islands within the South Shetland Island chain. These islands lie to the northwest of the Antarctic Peninsula and are the first islands one reaches when arriving from the Drake Passage. It took us a few hours to weave our way into the islands, and we extended this slightly as we were early for our visit (we are following a strict schedule around the islands with a load of other cruise ships – however we are yet to see any of them!). But this time was not wasted as we were able to take relatively close up views of icebergs in the vicinity.

The vicinity was Discovery Bay, where we also saw a rather large Chilean base on the shore. Many of icebergs have been shaped by the wind, and some of us tried in vain to point towards and through the carved out holes. The picture probably looks better without me in it!

The scale of the bergs is something else and I don’t think we have seen anything like the largest ones, although this one was pretty impressive. The blues around the berg and the sea are truly incredible and I think my photos were able to catch some of the hues.

The last mini berg is near our current anchor position and one we have to pay attention to in the anchor night watches – more on this later. The morning shot by and soon it was lunch on deck – lovely Chinese tomato soup (!) and something like a Cornish pasty, but with a Dutch twist. It was great.

And then the time came for our first landing on Barrientos Island, to the north of Discovery Bay. We kitted ourselves out properly, picked up all our essential emergency gear (and cameras, binoculars and all the other stuff!) and we were ready for the short zodiac crossing. Arriving at the beach, we were greeted by a sea of penguins (we had already noted their presence by the distinctive aroma and their calls we could hear from the ship!). One of their number gave me a particularly warm welcome, one which I only truly appreciated on returning to the ship and seeing the photo on a bigger screen!

I was surprised how relaxed they seemed around people. One could get what I thought was relatively close to them. There is a good pic of me kneeling down with a penguin only a few feet away which I hope I get a copy of.

Their relaxed state was later explained to me as being linked to the lack of many predators, a situation which has limited the development of a stress mechanism. In any case, they are a lovely animal (smell aside) and we were very fortunate to have arrived at the start of the breeding season. As the pictures show, one penguin sits on the egg in the nest while the other goes off hunting for food in the sea (fish and squid) or looking for material for the nest (including stealing it from other nests!).

We walked around the coast, following the volcanic rock before turning inland and hiking up a snow and ice covered hill. Reaching the top, the views over to the other side were simply stunning.

As the clouds rolled in later in the afternoon, I truly felt I was in another world. It had such an eerie feel to it, especially with the sound of the penguins and then the elephant seals. As these the photos show, the elephant seals are pretty big animals. It turns out that the ones we saw were the females.

They have come onshore now, ahead of the males and the start of the mating season. This is in contrast to the behaviour of Antarctic fur seals where the males are onshore first to mark out territory for their “harem”. We spent nearly four hours onshore. It was a magnificent experience and a great first landing, we were very lucky with the weather. Long may it continue! We were treated to steak for dinner tonight and then everyone was comparing photos and chatting about the day in the bar later. However, it was to be an early night for me as I signed up for a night anchor watch between 02h00 and 04h00 so I needed some shut eye!

Snow & Sail Repairs in the Southern Drake

Ship Log

Drake: 60'56,7 South, 061'27,9 West. Midday Dec 1. Snowing for 12 hours. Fog. Heading south 125 degrees. Mix sail / motor. Watch 8-12 and 16-20 today: snow ball fights on helm. Amazing helming in snow & Antarctic gale. Arrival Barrientos Isl Wed @ 14h00. All well.

December 1, Drake Passage

• 04h00: 60°26.0 South / 062°36.3 West
• 08h00: 60°40.0 South / 062°05.6 West
• 12h00: 60°55.7 South / 061°28.4 West
• 16h00: 61°12.6 South / 061°13.6 West
• 20h00: 61°31.6 South / 060°56.8 West
• 24h00: 61°50.1 South / 060°37.1 West

08h50: the first day of December and the first day of snow! Snow falling on a tallship, awakening to the sight of a white ship ploughing a forlorn path through the fog and grey sea.

Watch this morning began at 08h00. Well I say began, it began for some of the watch with the first duties but for me I was able to grab some quick breakfast before getting totally kitted out for the first run. Given it is cold and not so pleasant, we have reduced the watch times from 30 to 20 minutes. Outside it is spectacular, despite the cold. Everyone is straining their eyes to spot the first iceberg since we have a competition on board to see who chose the closest hour.

I cheated by getting the one of the permanent crew to show me the ice chart. It looked like early tomorrow morning, so I went for 1h00 and Frida, a co-conspirator, 5h00. We’ll see. Today brings another watch at 16h00 and in between some briefing on making landings in Antarctica.

10h10: Just back from another turn on the helm. It’s a fabulous experience. The snow raging around, the ship set fair at 125 degrees south and the bow crashing in and out of the swell.

Wonderful experience – especially when it can be digested in small bitesize chunks of 20 minutes with 40 minutes back in the warmth of the deck house. One can only marvel at the determination and courage of sailors over the centuries who battled against these conditions and far worse to explore these waters.

So back to the other members of the crew on my watch. Frida has been a good co-conspirator on various things, the stay sail setting yesterday and the cheeky manoeuvre on trying to beat the odds on the iceberg competition. She is from Switzerland and has rather amazingly cycled down from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia. In my book, that’s pretty crazy - the experience of cycling 20kms around El Calafate still fresh in my mind - but hats off to her. Another person on our watch who has travelled extensively is Carolien. She has been travelling for eight months, mainly around South America and only decided to join the Europa trip two days before it cast off in Ushuaia! That’s what I call spontaneous! A final person to write about in this first part on Europa characters is Erin. She is Canadian and is a GP when back home. Clearly a very useful person to have on one’s watch, although naturally we do have a permanent GP on board too! She comes from Vancouver and is used to the outdoor life. She owns a small cabin up in the mountains where she lives and explained to me how in the summer she does cross-country skiing to get up there. Those Canadians and their outdoors lifestyle! More on the permanent crew later.

November 30, Drake Passage

• 04h00: 58°10.9 South / 063°46.3 West
• 08h00: 58°44.8 South / 063°40.8 West
• 12h00: 59°07.2 South / 063°15.2 West
• 16h00: 59°27.1 South / 062°48.7 West
• 20h00: 59°48.1 South / 062°46.3 West
• 24h00: 60°09.1 South / 062°52.7 West

20h00-24h00: I’m writing this blog during Red Watch between 8pm and midnight. We take 30 minutes on shift outside, either on the helm or on look-out, with 30 minutes then back inside the deck house to warm up and do things like write a blog. Today has been an excellent day, good weather for the most part, in fact feeling relatively nice this afternoon. Now however the wind has picked up, the sky has got greyer and the sea has taken on a distinctly sombre and threatening mood.

The re-appearance of wind is greatly welcome as it has allowed us to put up some more sails. For most of the day until tea-time we were just under motor sail.

The break in sailing did allow the permanent crew to undertake some repairs to the sails and this gave myself and Freda, another member of the voyage crew our task of the day. Initially roped in by Val to help carry the repaired sail across the deck to the foremast where it was to be reattached, I volunteered additional help.

Such offers are rarely declined on a tallship and soon Frida and I found ourselves teetering a couple of meters up the foremast in the process of attaching the sail back to the rings. Essentially this should have been a rather simple task, but the two of us conspired to make it a much more difficult one, having to ask Val for assistance several times over!

But we got there, and I can happily say that the sail has now been set – and for the moment – is firmly attached. Long may it continue.

The other highlight of the day was the whales we saw late afternoon. Some of the voyage crew were taking climbing lessons up the rigging at the time and spotted at least two pods in the distance, at least 8 whales. After much discussion and consultation, Dan, our onboard expert, decided that the whales in question belonged to the Sei family. Pretty big ones. Certainly they looked big from our perspective, although they didn’t come close to the boat. We learned later on that these whales do not go down to the Antarctic and that where we saw them was pretty much the limit of their range. They were also heading north, confirming this analysis. An incredible sight, as always, to see whales in the open ocean. No photos of them though as Frida and I were still working on the sails! Other whales were to follow though...

A final interesting event to record came during our night watch in the early morning of Monday. Nick and I were on foreward lookout when suddenly a bright flash lit up the horizon, a trail of white and then green light heading down towards the water. Nick thought it was a flare. Right from the start I wondered whether it was a meteor of some kind. We radioed in the event to the wheelhouse and following a short chat with Martijn, the First Mate, we concluded that it had been a meteorite of some kind! Unfortunately I didn’t reach quickly enough to grab a camera and record this special event...