After leaving South Georgia Island on Wednesday evening, we headed northwest across the “Roaring Forties” for a four-day stretch at sea. With no shore excursions to get ready for the next morning, I had stayed up very late Wednesday night and so I got a late start on Thursday. Still, there was time for a late breakfast, and there were still several events planned each day. The weather all day Thursday was perfectly clear & sunny, but still frigid temperatures; that night we were able to go on deck and some of the Australians gave us a star tour, including pointing out the Southern Cross, which I hadn’t seen since my 2012 trip to Australia. During the day, it was still possible to spot seabirds, including albatross, alongside and behind the ship.
Mid-morning on Thursday was the first of a two-part presentation by Jorge, the Expedition Leader, on navigation and the how the problem of longitude was solved (having read Dava Sobel’s book “Longitude” many years ago, I knew the answer already, but it was still interesting to hear it again), and an afternoon lecture on Albatrosses. On Friday, the second part of the Longitude talk, a talk about krill (more fascinating than you’d imagine), a visit to the Ship’s bridge between 3 and 5 pm, and a Trivia session with all the naturalists in the main lounge that ended up with a tie between two French Teams and an amusing face-off to decide the winner. You really had to have been sober & paying attention at all the lectures to do well at this. I was on one of the Australian teams, so….
The visit to the bridge was pretty interesting; even though everything was digital & on big screens, there I spotted a whole section of cubbyholes along the rear wall with old-fashioned signal flags, and a big chart table where the ship’s course was being plotted hourly with a ruler and pencil. Also, they had about a dozen of the finest binoculars up there that I’ve ever used! I also enjoyed hearing about the ship’s stabilizers that have kept the voyage most comfortable for us. Apparently this whole trip has been “not too rough” but not exactly smooth sailing either. All I can say is that except for when we were anchored in protected bays, this ship has never stopped rocking (I’d say moderately) and pitching (seems a lot) since we left Ushuaia. I’ve learned: don’t walk on the ship with your hands in your pockets, and don’t bend over to pick anything up. Fortunately, I haven’t had to take any seasickness medicine, nor have I felt even a moment of queasiness. Anyway, one interesting thing about the stabilizers is that they were using only one, on the side of the ship oppposite the direction of the swell, which does all the work and creates less drag.
Saturday we had a fantastic morning lecture by Leo, the glaciologist, about life in a polar research station, which was a sometimes harrowing, but really interesting series of stories about his time doing research at a Polish research station in Hornsund, Svalbard.
As we sailed north, the weather got noticeably milder, and on Saturday, for the first time, people (including us) were able to eat outside on the pool deck at the rear of the ship, and a few were even in the swimming pool, although the water was pretty rough in there. The Saturday afternoon lecture was all about the science of ice and snow (the naturalists make these talks so much more interesting than they sound, and it’s not just that everybody is desperate for some diversion). Saturday night was the gala, farewell dinner, and I was flattered to have been invited to join a group of new friends at that. Before the dinner, everybody went to the theater for a presentation of all the crew members from all the departments - some 156 of them for 170 passengers on this trip (the number of passengers keeps going down, not sure why!).
Sunday was a gorgeous day, and a quiet day of packing and final briefings on the disembarkation process in Montevideo on Monday morning. Thenaturalists put on a hilarious farewell lecture for us in two versions, one in French and a later one at 10:30 for the larger English-speaking contingent. They even showed us what was in big plastic barrels that were always just by the landing spot on the shore expeditions (survival gear for up to 100 people in case we were not able to get back to the ship for any reason) and made it funny.
You’d have thought that 4 days at sea with nothing to do would be a total bore, but there was never a dull moment, and it flew by.
Bags were to be outside the cabins by 10:00 pm Sunday night, and disembarkation is to take place from about 7:00 to 9:00 on Monday morning. Since we are making our own plans for Montevideo, Jim, Neil Ann and I don’t have to be off the ship until the very last group, at 9:00 am. At that point, the ship begins to get ready for a departure Monday afternoon for a 21-day repositioning cruise to Lisbon, on which there will be only 20 passengers!
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