Day one at sea

We have a 3-day sail before we reach our first land which is South Georgia. The two most challenging things I find when we are traveling like this is firstly getting up early, typically we are up between 7:00 and 8:00 a.m. and tiredness at the end of the day even though I might have done very little during the day. Although we will be at sea all day we still have to be up early and have had breakfast because there is a 9:00 a.m. compulsory briefing and introduction of the naturalist team. There are 14 mostly French naturalists this time with a diverse range of skills and knowledge, birds and whales of course, an historian, geologist, ice and glaciers and someone with a research background in Albatross. This is followed by an important briefing relating to bio security which is tight in this area, both with respect to ensuring no seeds or other material which could be detrimental to this fragile environment make it to the island and because we need to be careful about avian flu.

Our first briefing gives us more of a picture of what to expect. I particularly like the slide with the differences between different species of whales. The captain details what we are likely to experience with a rough journey for the first part of our trip to South Georgia. It's unusual that the captain makes this briefing, usually it is the expedition leader. Our expedition leader is French and not that easy to understand, I'm sure we'll get used to her as we go along. I am pleased to learn that we will be able to land on South Georgia. Last year the island was shut down because of avian flu and the only way visitors could see it was via zodiac. I'm not sure what changed.

Of course we completely forgot that it was Valentine's Day but Ponant did not forget with a long stem rose delivered to each cabin.

First night is always a gala dinner and introduction of the officers. I try to avoid the photo shoot with the captain and we were late leaving the cabin alas not late enough to avoid the obligatory handshake and pictures. Inside the theater there is a a singer and then the captain introduces each of the officers. What was unusual was each told us a little about themselves. Didn't make it to the show, bed was calling.もっと詳しく