RWSE Day 19: Continuing North

“But who wants to be foretold the weather? It is bad enough when it comes, without our having the misery of knowing about it beforehand.” ~~ Jerome K. Jerome ~~ (from the Daily Program)

I took a sick day today!

Or perhaps a better description might be a mental-health day! Going to bed with a sore throat last night, I was feeling just a bit off this morning. The cold symptoms that I was expecting never eventuated, but I was dragging. So, I gave myself the day off. At least until this afternoon. It was an unpleasant day anyway … 27F (-3C) … with the wind blowing at 50 knots for a feels-like temp of 6F (-14C) … and some snow.

It was neither EL Sara nor Tennessee who came on the P/A with the daily wake up announcement today. Rather, we were ‘sung awake’ by Caroline, one of the passengers, who adapted the tune of “Good Morning” to fit our situation.

We were at 73.2° S this morning, continuing north towards the Antarctic Circle, but we are still several days away from that milestone. Ortelius pretty much ‘danced’ its way to our current position. There was some rotten ice at times; some bergs, but mostly open water. That changed around 11:00a. We found ourselves amidst heavier ice cover. By noon our speed was reduced to 3.2 knots … the bridge team carefully navigating us through the ice belt that is starting to close up access into the Weddell Sea. Once we got out of the ice around 1:00p, we sped up again, and for a while the sun broke through the overcast, but that didn’t last long. Fog set in soon enough and was intermittent much of the day.

While I was resting, life aboard the ship followed the planned schedule. There were morning lectures — “Working at an Argentinian Antarctic Station” by Clara; “Marine Threats” by EL Sara. Workshops filled up much of the early afternoon — video editing by Claudio; crevasse rescue by Phil and Clara; a helicopter demo by Chief Engineer Mario in the hangar.

I emerged from my ‘cave’ just before 4:00p for Gary’s afternoon lecture on “Sea Ice: Formation and Navigation.” As he said, while a straight line is usually the fastest way to navigate, that doesn’t apply in icy waters. The fastest way through the ice is around it … which is what we are doing. As though timed for the ending of an ice-related lecture, we had just finished clapping our appreciation for Gary when we spotted an amazing iceberg … parts of it clear and so deeply compressed that the blue looked more green than anything else. Mui managed to get a decent photo of it … too bad the light was so blah!

Recap followed the berg sighting. In addition to sharing with us the navigation chart showing our location above the Antarctic Circle, EL Sara also shared Ortelius’s Weddell Sea track as recorded by the Vessel Finder app. It was particularly interesting to note that while we are all by ourselves in the Weddell Sea, that will change as we near the Antarctic Peninsula. The Windy chart still shows a big storm between us and the peninsula. Conditions look decent for our route tomorrow, but all bets are off after that.

Our educational activities wrapped up with a few short recap briefings. 1 March being St David’s Day, Tennessee talked a bit about the patron saint of the Welsh and the Welsh connection to Antarctica. Who knew that the word penguin is a composite of the Welsh words “pen” and “gwyn” … which mean “white head” … in reference to the now-extinct Great Auk, which was considered the penguin of the north.

Faith, who is the coordinator for the dive group was next. She talked about the “Sea Star Wasting Syndrome” which is causing die-offs of sea stars … particularly sunflower stars. She advised that if the divers have an opportunity to get in the water in the peninsula region, they will be looking to further document this syndrome.

Chloe wrapped up with a presentation entitled “Cool Fish of Antarctica.” It was interesting to hear that while Antarctic waters make up 10% of the world’s oceans, only 1% of the fish fauna is found here, including the ice fish. The species in these waters have a freezing point of 27F (-2.7C) … vs other fish species which have a freezing point of 34F (-0.9C).

We shared a table for dinner with our Dutch friends and afterwards skipped karaoke night in the lounge in lieu of an early night. Czytaj więcej