March 13 - South Georgia Island; Drygalski Fjord

We continued on towards South Georgia Island all night, seas were comparatively smooth, and I woke up to a dense fog, so couldn’t see much more than about 50 yards on either side of the ship.  But around 8:45 the captain came on the loudspeaker & announced that South Georgia Island was in sight off the port bow.  The fog had lifted and there it was!

First view of South Georgia Island, this morning

We are still about 40 miles away, according to the captain, but the snowy, forbidding mountains were pretty clearly visible, disappearing over the horizon to the west.  This southwest side of the island is almost unapproachable, with sheer cliffs and glaciers that end at the water’s edge, while the northeast side is completely different, with fjords and glaciers that end on wide beaches, and plenty of green.  It’s the northeast side that we’ll be exploring the next few days.  

The naturalists were all out at 9:00 for a bird-watching session off the stern, and we saw a number of albatrosses and petrels, which they identified for us, but they were few and far between but we’ll see more of them as we get closer in.

After reaching Coopers Bay around midday, it was challenging to stand on the front of the ship to take photos because the wind was so strong, so it was no surprise when the captain announced that with wind gusts of up to 50 knots (that’s almost 60 mph) in the bay, the Zodiac sightseeing trips would have to be cancelled.  Instead they were going to steer the ship into the Drygalski Fjord, which is a large fjord at the southeast tip of the island.  As soon as we got past the entrance to the fjord, the wind died down and we were surrounded by emerald green water with small pieces of ice floating around (more and more ice as we got farther into the fjord).  There were plenty of birds, and a couple of seals, but otherwise it was all silent as we slipped deeper into the fjord, except for the snapping and popping of all the melting ice, the gushing meltwater at the bottom of the glaciers, and the occasional loud crack as a some ice broke off the front edge of a glacier and fell into the water..  They told us that the temperature was a balmy 12 degrees Celsius (54 F) and that there was an unusually large amount of melting water cascading from the many glaciers that we passed.  Along the way, we also passed a huge leopard seal napping on a small piece of ice, who looked up at the ship suspiciously, but didn’t move otherwise.  

 

Nearing the entrance to Drygalski Fjord

Leopard Seal taking a nap as we passed

Most of us agreed that we saw more from the ship than we probably would have seen from the Zodiacs, and that it was certainly a lot more comfortable this way, so nobody seemed to mind.  Not much animal life, but plenty of beautiful scenery and geology.  

Late in the afternoon they showed a couple of National Geographic documentaries about Antarctica in the theater (I stayed for one only), a naturalist talk about the sea birds, then a briefing for tomorrow’s activities (landings at Gold Harbor in the morning and Ocean Harbor in the afternoon), and the fancy “White Night” dinner when everyone was asked to wear white, or at least black & white, and some of the ship’s officers joined us at the tables.  I sat between two really charming women, one from Brisbane, Australia and the other from Los Angeles (and one of the very few other Americans on this ship).  After that, a Trivia Contest in the lounge and visiting with some of our new Australian friends, so it was a pretty late night, but fun.