Sail on the horizon

Posted on February 19, 2012 by

We have just finished yet another crossing of the Drake Passage with deep swell, endless horizons and winds which travel around the globe before throwing their force across our bow. In the middle of this vast expanse of blue my eye was caught by a fleeting white cloud standing proudly against a steel grey sky. As we sailed on the glimpsed of white peeking over the swell resolved itself into the sail of a small yacht valiantly striking our in defiance of Southern seas. As our huge steel ship quickly left the small yacht in our wake I reflected on the two modes of crossing and dwelled on our rapidly approaching voyage on Widdershins that will follow the same course. Today I sit in comfort in an enclosed bridge, I eat three fantastic meals a day prepared by talented chefs and spend most evenings luxuriating in the comfort of a sauna after a beer in the bar. When we cross on our yacht we will battling the elements in a semi-enclosed cockpit, shipping the occasional wave over the side, and blown before the rage of the wind. Our meals will be whatever we can scrape together on a kerosine stove in a madly rocking galley and and creature comforts on board will rarely extend beyond a mug of warm rum to help sleep come after a stressful watch. Seems strange but I can’t wait to jump into the yacht and face the Drake on our own terms. You can keep the sauna … just so long as the diesel heater keeps us warm enough that our fingers are able to type the daily blog!

Posted in Drake passage, Patrick in Antarctica | 1 Comment

Wilkins’ Mechanic

Posted on February 12, 2012 by

Yesterday we were exploring the remnants of the Hector whaling station in Whalers Bay of Deception Island. The derelict remains of building once devoted to the wholesale slaughter of whales marks an important part of Antarctica’s history, but amidst the rusting hulks of steamers and the rotting remains of the whaling industry, Whales Bay also offers an insight into the spirit of adventure and exploration that marked the early operations in this region. The site boasts the remains of a British research station abandoned in the volcanic eruptions that saw massive mudslides hitting the area in the late 1960s, but it also is home to a rather non-descript hanger like building that perched on the northern end of the beach. And indeed it is a hanger, and in fact the hanger once housed the plane that embarked upon the first powered flight over Antarctica – captained by an Aussie by the name of Sir Hubert Wilkins.

Today as we leave Deception in our wake we were privileged to hear the reminiscences of the daughter of the mechanic who helped Wilkins piece together this amazing endeavour. A young man born in 1896 in Washington, Ona’s father started working on Model T fords and ended up participating in no less than 5 expeditions with Wilkins visiting both poles and being central to the operation to get the first flights up and running. Apparently they saw it all as a rather dry operation with his diary reflecting comments such as “Plane assembly in makeshift hanger, 55 degrees below” with little commentary on the guts of exploration … a feature which makes many of the men of early aviation history. Wilkins and his team did not search for fame or glory. This was a precise operation to reach a defined goal to aid our understanding of the world and to promote a cooperative approach to the exploration of the planet.  As we look back it is fantastic to gather an insight into the lives and opinions of these pioneers who pushed the boundaries of our knowledge into the ice south.

Posted in Deception Island, Patrick in Antarctica, South Shetland Islands, Whalers Bay | Tagged | Leave a comment

Whales – before and after

Posted on February 10, 2012 by

Today we cruised amidst the debris of the black history of Antarctic whaling. Sunken whale chasers loomed like drunken steel castles above the quiet waters of Antarctica, water boats used for carting water required to render whales into oil for lamps rotted on the shore and the scattered remains of the rough accommodation used by the whalers marred the pristine shores of the icy continent.

Meanwhile, the waters offshore resounded in the deep bass notes of humpback whales jetting water into the blue skies as they surfaced to catch a breath before sinking to the depths in search of krill. The humpbacks in these waters were hit pretty heavily earlier this centuries and like many of the great whales their numbers dwindled at these magnificent beasts were slaughtered. Unlike many of the whales however, the numbers are starting to increase and each year we get a chance to watch more whales as they return to their icy domain. This morning I was lucky enough to spend half an hour with a mother and calf as they slowly picked their way though the pack ice, happily unconcerned by the zodiacs trailing in their wake full of awestruck spectators. My boat in particular managed to entice the leviathans for a closer inspection and my heart rate skyrocketed as the two beasts circles slowly around and under the zodiac, and raised their heads out of the water to look back at us. Just ten or fifteen minutes of wonder but enough to feel a unique contact with the denizens of the South, and enough to remind me that to visit this land you need to come under it’s terms – the wildlife of the Antarctic is worth so much more than a few lamps of oil…

Posted in Patrick in Antarctica | Tagged | Leave a comment

Paradise Harbor

Posted on February 9, 2012 by

Today we had a glorious day in Antarctica with blue skies and white ice cradled in a mirror like sea that reflected  the peaks surrounding Paradise Harbor. The bay was filled with sea ice and I spent hours weaving in and out of the dense ice flows and circling the chunks of ice to view the lounging leopard seals that seemed to be parked on every second flat piece of ice. The glacier in Skontorp Cove was shedding ice regularly in spectacular crashes that sent chunks of ice the size of houses rolling into the calm seas and breaking the mirrored surface in rolling waves that spread out to us just in time to awake us from the awed stupor that witnessing the birth of bergs imparts. The highlight of the day though, was certainly a pod of Orca that slipped through the still waters of the Errera Channel and casually inspected the zodiac before swimming beneath and disappearing with the sure certainty that we were not food. Another fantastic day!

Posted in Paradise Harbour, Patrick in Antarctica, Skontorp Cove | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Pals from the other pole

Posted on February 7, 2012 by

Today as we were exploring Goudier Island in the Antarctic Peninsula I spotted a yacht that seemed vaguely familiar. Upon closer inspection it turned out to be the Anne Mari (http://annemaritilantarktis.blogspot.com), a Norwegian yacht with a number of sailors aboard that I had been in touch with a few years ago in Oslo, Norway. Seems they have sailed all the way from the Arctic circle in Norway to the Antarctic Peninsula over the past year and are now exploring the icy tip of Antarctia! Unfortuantly some of the folk I had hoped to catch up with on board had not been able to make it this far south but it is such a wonder to see familiar faces down here. It seems the spirit of adventure is still alive in the frozen south and the paths of those that dare are destined to cross!

Posted in Goudier Island, Palmer Archipelago, Patrick in Antarctica | Leave a comment

Crossing the Circle

Posted on February 3, 2012 by

This morning at 10:00 we slowly nosed over the Antarctic Circle – that point at which the sun refuses to dip below the horizon in the Southern summer and stubbornly hides its face for the duration of winter. The sea was shrouded in fog as we crossed the line and the wind was eerily absent so that an feeling of mystery hung in the air to be shattered by the strident blast from the ships fog horn to mark passing of the circle. This is the furthest South we have made it this year and despite the heavy ice we know will dog us as we make for Marguerite Bay, right now there is no ice in sight and the air temperature is a comfortable zero degrees. Strange to think that here in the depth of the Antarctic we are walking around in light sweaters while in Europe people are freezing to death in the grips of an icy spell that has seen temperatures thirty degrees below zero. But then again the Antarctic is a capricious mistress and all this calm weather leaves me with an inkling that at any moment the gales will be switched on and the ship will be wreathed in ice as the blizzard begins.

Posted in Antarctic Circle, Marguerite Bay, Patrick in Antarctica | Tagged | Leave a comment

Back into the Drake

Posted on February 1, 2012 by

We are on our way back across the Drake with the Antarctic circle in front of us … a slightly longer trip than typical and a trip which will take us into the “big ice”. This season has seen us encountering unusually heavy ice all through the Antarctic Peninsula but this time we will be heading into a region where no ships have managed to reach their destination. The ice has formed a barrier that thus far has withheld the summer traffic but we hope to pierce throuhgh the circle and beyond. Sometimes it feels like we are a very small boat in a big ocean but the journey itself is half the challenge…

Posted in Antarctic Circle, Drake passage, Patrick in Antarctica | Leave a comment

Happy Australia Day!

Posted on January 29, 2012 by

It’s always a tradition to have a BBQ on Australia Day (26 January) and even in Antarctica it’s just not right to make exceptions. So after a day exploring Antarctica we broke out the grill on the back deck and cooked up some snags and steak under the crisp blue skies of an Antarctic summer day. The weather really played the trump card and after days of freezing cold and grey skies the weather treated us to a blazing hot sunny day (well hot by Antarctic standards means over zero). The ship was surrounded by spectacular glaciers and the sheer cliffs of the Errera Channel. A long way from Australia but a great place to celebrate all things Aussie!

Posted in Patrick in Antarctica | Leave a comment

The grip of the cold

Posted on January 26, 2012 by

This afternoon the temperature plummeted to -10 degrees. The snow was falling from a bruised grey sky and fell to the hungry dark sea with barely a flicker as the winds had been swallowed by the cold. As the snow settled on the water it merged into a thin slurry that carpeted the surface of the sea like an oil slick and the sea turned into a sheet of roiling frosted ice. Before long the slurry of snow began to freeze. Soon the zodiacs where sending cracks into the frozen sea ahead as we searched for the elusive silhouette of the ship amidst the flakes of snow that scut visibility down to 15 meters. Thank the gods for the GPS … otherwise I think we may have spent the night frozen into the sea as so many of yesterday’s explorers of Antarctica have done.

Posted in Patrick in Antarctica | Leave a comment

Ice

Posted on January 26, 2012 by

Early this morning we delicately twisted the huge hunk of steel that is our ship through the narrow and twisting leads in the ice that stretched across the narrow Lemaire Channel that separates the mainland of Antarctica from Booth Island. On either side the 800 meter channel the rock rises steeply in sheer cliffs and stretched before us was a tumbling array of sea ice and floating icebergs that taunted us in our ambition of driving further south for the day.

Eventually we made it through the channel only to be stopped by an impenetrable barrier of ice. One we had assessed our chances of proceeding we submitted to the power of the ice and checked our southerly passage for a morning of exploring the ice in zodiacs. Right now my left arm (the arm I drive with) is like jelly after having spent hours at the helm pushing the zodiac in amongst the bergs to discover seals and penguins hidden in the labyrinthine maze of leads and piled up ice.

Posted in Booth Island, Lemaire Channel, Patrick in Antarctica | Tagged | Leave a comment