Ushuaia: Turnaround day

It always is a hectic and emotional day when we dock in Ushuaia. Hectic, because the action starts early in the morning to get ready to disembark; once our passengers have departed on their way back home, we have to prepare the ship for the arrival of our new guests; and then the arrival of our new guests themselves, which usually takes some time because we have to check everybody in and they have to get acquainted with MS Fram. Emotional, because we’re lucky enough to always make some friends among our passengers, and it is always emotional to say goodbye – but also, because we very much look forward to the new friends we’ll certainly make, which makes us happy in anticipation.

So, once everything is shipshape onboard Fram, and we are cleared to sail, we very slowly (an very “scenically”!) cruise down the Beagle Channel en route to our new adventure… Exciting times!

Heading home

After a ferocious partial day on the Drake, the second and now third days were relatively calm and comfortable. In a way it was the perfect combination- to see this unique part of the marine world in both states- lion and lamb! If you are unconvinced about this contrast, read yesterday’s blog!

Sometime in the afternoon we approached the continent of South America close enough to make out some dark shapes on the horizon. Land ho! As we got nearer, the warm air wafted the beautiful smell of the Notofagus forest out over the ship. This seemed even more wonderful considering that one of the last smells we remembered from Antarctica was penguin poo!

 Soon we were sailing around the islands in the Parque Nacional del Cabo de Hornos, south of the big island of Tierra del Fuego and a little later we were treated to repeat visits by a large pod of Dusky Dolphins. Many times they ran up alongside the ship and breached or “porpoised”, with bodies completely out of the water. It did not take much imagination to suppose that they were welcoming us back to where we had started this journey!

In the late afternoon the Captain hosted a farewell reception in the Panorama lounge on deck 7, which was followed by our traditional Fram charity auction.

Well, tonight is the time to pack in preparation for our return journeys. This is always a bitter-sweet day because, although we want to get home for Christmas, we do not want this incredible experience in Chile and Antarctica to end. But alas it must.

Spot the difference!

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Where can we start? It almost seems as we have been to two completely different oceans, when we contrast yesterday’s and today’s Drake Passage! Yesterday, it was dark raging waters crested with furious white foam; today we had calm azure seas. Yesterday, we barely saw small Cape petrels keeping close to the water surface to avoid the fury of the wind; today, we admired a host of bigger birds, like wandering, black-browed and grey-headed albatrosses, elegantly and effortlessly ascending and descending around the vessel. Yesterday, very limited visibility because of the high waves and the dark skies; today, endless horizon all around Fram. Yesterday, a great many passengers feeling rather queasy and common areas on board not quite ghost-like, but rather lonely; today, many well-rested and happy people enjoying the view from the outside decks, contentedly reading or dozing in the observation lounge, and generally enjoying the many amenities Fram has to offer, including of course the choice of food in our well-provisioned restaurant!

Although Captain Hårvig specifically invited all on board Fram to enjoy the beauty of nature in the middle of yesterday’s strong storm, we have the feeling passengers are quite happy to have seen this wild spectacle, and to have nothing but memories of it today…

Antarctic nature makes the rules

It should have been our last day in Antarctica with two landings in different penguin colonies. But even our expedition leader made a good plan for the day, and there is always at least a plan B, sometimes we have to except, that the nature is in charge of the real plan.

The early morning started with a strong storm. We could feel it already when we were still lying in bed. The ship was moving strongly and everything we didn’t secure properly the night before, was rolling through the cabin. The wind picking up very fast and soon it became clear, that there wouldn’t be any possibility for a landing in the morning. In gusts the wind was blowing 60m per second, these are more than 200 km per hour and that corresponds to a very strong Hurricane. We were lucky that we were sheltered next to Livingston Island.

The captain made the decision to stay during the morning next to Livingston Island waiting for better weather conditions, but at 2pm we started to sail north into the Drake Passage. The wind was still blowing at around 30m per second, but FRAM behaved very well under these special conditions.

The lecture team offered us lecturers during the afternoon, but not everybody was able to join. In the evening the wind was blowing up again and most passengers made the decision to go to sleep very early.

Around 7.30pm our captain Arild Hårvig made a last announcement into all cabins. He ended with the sentence “enjoy the nature”. And of course, we all came down to Antarctica to enjoy nature. But for sure all passengers dreamed about another nature. On this trip Antarctica showed us all variations of nature. The strong storm of course we enjoyed best in our bed in our nice cabins.

Summer snow

Well, I guess the official first day of summer here in Antarctica is 21 December, but we are close enough to this date to call it summer. And today we had snow from morning till noon! As the Antarctic Peninsula warms up so the air can contain more moisture, and thus is snows and rains more than it used to. Snow is summer is not so unusual in Antarctica but vertically falling snow, as we has today, is. Usually it blows sideways, as close to horizontal as does not matter! So, as you can guess, winds were almost non-existent during our landing.

After breakfast we prepared for our first landing of the day at an Argentinean station called Almirante Brown. By stepping on the rocks at the landing site we officially touched down on continental Antarctica. After getting over the excitement of the continental landing, some of us enjoyed watching the resident Gentoo Penguins go about their daily business in the snow. They are sitting on eggs right now. Others climbed the steep, snow-covered hill behind the station and had a marvelous time sliding back down. Today we broke the record and Philip, one of our South African passengers, went up and down 9 times!

 The snow fell unabated through lunch, then eased off for our second landing at Cuverville Island, the largest Gentoo Penguin colony in Antarctica. But this is not the only accolade we can bestow upon this place. It is situated in one of the most beautiful places in the world, with the towering, ice-covered peaks of Rongé Island on one side and the Antarctic continent on the other. And in the sea around the island was today one of the best and diverse collections of small and medium-sized icebergs ever to have existed- your faithful blogger is sure of that! Some of us even had the opportunity to climb amongst the bergy-bits. We had time to get to know the Cuvercille Gentoos today, and witnessed several skuas attempting to steal a penguin egg for dinner (if you are on the side of the penguin here, remember that skuas have to eat too).

Tomorrow is our last day of landings in Antarctica and I am sure we will make the best of it!

14th December 2011, 65° 11’ SOUTH

 Today is the big day – and do we know that on board MS Fram! 14^th December 2011 marks the centennial of Amundsen’s party reaching the South Pole, and they travelled to Antarctica on board the famous vessel Fram, afterwhich our ship is proudly named. And trying to follow the famous explorer’s steps, we pursued our southward journey today.

First thing in the morning, we sailed through the Lemaire Channel, which was hiding itself with fog and rain, both of which luckily vanished by the time we came out the southern end. And we were then greeted by a spectacular, truly Antarctic scenery most befitting to today’s date: the sea in front of us was covered in pack ice, and as we sailed on in our southerly journey, the buttery aspect of soft ice –seawater just beginning to freeze– met us, and a bit later we came across beautiful pancake ice –the next step in the formation of pack ice. On the ice itself, we were very happy to see some resting seals, including Weddell, crabeater and leopard seals. 

 

Captain Hårvig decided to make good use of our solid, ice-class hull by carefully navigating through the ice floe labyrinth, and making it to the southernmost point of our trip, just shy of Petermann Island: 65° 11’ S, 64° 10’ W. Not quite the 90° S required to reach the South Pole, but we are all very happy to be here today, and had the following picture taken to celebrate the occasion and as a humble tribute to the great explorers of years gone by.

Having left the ice maze, we spent the best part of today taking our guests to have a closer look at the ice, on board our maneuverable PolarCirkel boats. We also spent the best part of the day trying to get a closer look at a group of orcas that were spotted around the vessel at various times – and did not really succeed, but looking for them between the floating ice, against the background of glaciers cascading down the mountains all the way down to the calm seas was fabulous!

A historical day

This morning we went to one of the lesser visited points around the Neumayer Channel: Dorian Bay and its two huts. The smaller of the two is an Argentine emergency hut that seemed to be pretty abandoned; its door was open and the view into the interior showed a few boxes of (presumably) emergency rations plus, surprisingly, some firewood. The larger one is a former British “base”. The hut was used as an intermediate stop for supplies and personnel to be flown to Rothera, a base much further south. The hut had been declared an historic site only two years ago and was looked after by the same trust that kept Port Lockroy’s Bransfield Hut (Base A) intact as a museum.

Between our morning landing at Dorian Bay and the afternoon landing at Port Lockroy the captain had to move the Fram just a short distance, but wind kept us from landing right away. We had to wait for the wind to die down a bit, and still, the rides ashore and back were quite wet.

While Dorian Bay had been in use from the 1970’s onward, Base A had been set up in 1944 during World War 2 as part of “Operation Tabarin” to not only reiterate Britain’s claim to Antarctica, but also to prevent German operations down south, or at least to report on them. After the war Base A had been an important site for scientific observations, and part of the museum covered this aspect.

The base had been rebuilt in 1996, and the museum part showed how the personnel lived and worked in the 1950’s. Apart from the base being a museum, it also was a working post office, and many a postcard was written and sent with season’s greetings.

While the base had been manned in earlier times, today it is womaned, as there are four young female volunteers. The “troops” are British and the base commander German –how times have changed….    

Apart from the historical aspect of our visits, the bird-lovers had a field day, too: Gentoo Penguins, Snowy Sheathbills and Antarctic Terns were seen in the morning, and even more so in the afternoon around Bransfield Hut.

A day in a volcano

……yes, IN a volcano! How amazing is that?!

But first, how we got here- late last night we ended our bumpy Drake Passage crossing and entered the Bransfield Strait between the South Shetland Islands and the Antarctic Peninsula. There we spent the night off Deception Island, in preparation for landings the next day. Deception Island is an active volcano that last erupted in 1969.

The sun was shining early in this morning but clouds developed as we entered the narrow “Neptune’s Bellows” and into the flooded caldera of the volcano called Port Foster. Before we entered, we caught a glimpse of Chinstrap Penguins on the beach below the huge colony at Bailey Head and the "Needles" close by.

Whaler’s Bay was to our starboard and was to be the site of our first landing. There we found the famous abandoned Norwegian/Chilean Whaling Station and British Base “B” founded in WWII. We also found snow, or more correctly it found us! It started snowing soon after we left the ship and continued through most of the morning. This is late-spring in Antarctica after all!

Some adventuresome passengers took advantage of the sheltered waters of Whaler’s Bay to go for an icy swim! This takes a lo of nerve with water temperatures about 0°C!

After a short reposition within Port Foster during lunch, we anchored in Telefon Bay and landed close by. Our main focus here was a hike up to the top of a volcanic cone and then around a crater lake. We will let the images speak for themselves (but we have to say, the scenery was stunning!

While we were in Telefon Bay, our Spanish passengers had the opportunity and privilege to visit the nearby Spanish base Gabriel de Castilla. 

A day in the life of a Fram passenger

Despite the meteorological threat of a low pressure zone ahead of us, we awoke to rather calm seas in the Drake Passage – a welcome thing for all on board MS Fram! Gently rolling seas and mild breezes meant we could get on with life as usual, which today included various interesting things.

After breakfast, we began our preparations to land in Antarctica, both procedural and practical. The first aspect was dealt with by briefing our passengers of the “Dos and don’ts” of Antarctic behavior, a modern day equivalent to America’s popular XIX^th century guidebook “The Laws of Etiquette; or, Short Rules and Reflections for Conduct in Society”. So, in an analogous manner to the “Etiquette’s” paragraph informing readers that they “may wipe their lips on the table cloth, but not blow their noses with it”, we recommended that our passengers may approach the wildlife to a sensible 5 meter distance, but not try to touch it as we are not in Disneyland. Another of the Antarctic “don’ts” is to bring life forms from other places into the white continent, which is why we spent a good part of the morning vacuuming the backpacks and other gear we’ll bring along during our landings.

Our German and French speaking passengers visited the bridge today, where Captain Hårvig explained them the art of navigating a modern vessel like MS Fram, as well as the many technological advances that make it an easier task – which naturally does not exclude the need for many years’ experience at sea!

After lunch, passengers enjoyed a quiet afternoon, admiring the vastness of the ocean from the comfortable seats of the panoramic lounge on deck 7, whilst enjoying freshly-prepared waffles; listening to the lectures on various Antarctica-related subjects; watching one of the historical movies depicting polar exploration we screened in our lecture theatres; and also, peacefully enjoying a nice nap and making good use of the gentle rocking we have been treated to all day long…

The Horn!

Well, we made it! Early this morning we landed on Isla Hornos, AKA “Cape Horn”. In actual fact, Cape Horn is a small peninsula on Isla Hornos, which is considered to be the most southerly place in the Americas. You may be aware of the fierce reputation the “Cape” has- many a sailor has lost his life rounding the Horn. But today we had flat calm conditions with a gentle swell coming in on the landing beach- rare conditions to be sure. The Fram has attempted landings on Cape Horn before during previous Antarctic seasons but conditions only allow it perhaps once or twice in 10 attempts so you can now understand better how lucky we were.

One hundred and thirty-eight steps take you from the cobble beach to the top of the island. From there you can walk on a board-walk to the lighthouse and chapel and gift shop, or take a right to the famous Albatross monument, dedicated to all the sailors who have lost their lives in this area. An old belief held that albatrosses were occupied by the souls of dead sailors, and it was thus very bad luck to kill an albatross. This was a major theme in the well-known poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by the 18^th century English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

God save thee, ancient Mariner,

From the fiends that plague thee thus! -

Why look'st thou so? With my crossbow

I shot the Albatross."

Once we returned to the vessel the captain navigated the Fram around the Horn and into the Pacific Ocean, repeating what has been done by so many ships before. Then we set sail for Antarctica and entered the Drake Passage. We will see what Nature will bring us over the next two days!