We are now... South of the Antarctic Circle !
And that is pretty much the highlight of today's excitement :-)
Stepping backwards in time...
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Breakfast. Eggs benedict, I think it's called? Poached eggs on some sort of muffin or scone, with creamy sauce on top. The chefs occasionally go overboard with breakfast :-) There is also bacon. Plus all the usual.
I have porridge. Several helpings. Plus some bread. Nice nut bread.
Then: Deb watches the second-last episode of Amundsen vs Scott. Then a talk on Weddell seals and their adaptations for deep diving. A foetus has similar adaptations. For some reason.
About 2pm -- we reach the Balleny Islands. Great lumps of rocky cliffs, covered in snow. Much like Antarctica itself, we're told. Impressive. Cold. We're not sure how high they are, the tops fade into white cloud. That's the north island of the group. It may be called Young Island.
Soon after that -- we cross the Antarctic Circle ! There's a bit of a celebration. Mulled wine. (Deb is glad to hand hers to another passenger.) An oath. (We promise to be good ambassadors for Antarctica.) And the usual tough / crazy people stand up to be hosed with fresh Antarctic water.
Almost 7pm. We're parked off Young Island. Various tour staff have sailed off in rubber duckies to see if it will be possible to land. Latest report is, not on this side of the island. From what we can see from where we're parked -- I'm not surprised. The coast is all sheer walls of rock or -- more commonly -- sheer walls of snow.
I go outside to get a photo of a rubber ducky against the island. To get an idea of scale. My eyeball estimate would have the snow cliffs at five to ten metres from sea level to precarious top. [Later estimates from guides in the rubber ducky are at 20m.] The ducky looks very small, with the cliffs behind.
I get to the top deck and the duckies are out of sight. Are they really that small? Are they hidden in a curve of the coast? No idea. I watch for a while. No sign of them. I come back inside to warm up.
Takeaway lesson: If we do go out in the zodiacs -- I'll wear even more thermals than usual.
Agnes tackles me on my way back. When booking, the original schedule had us sailing through our wedding anniversary. I asked for a chocolate-themed dessert on that night. Agnes asks, do we still want some sort of later celebration? Why not? I say. An announcement of our 40-years-and-about-forty-days anniversary... For a change, let Deb be embarrassed by something other than me :-)
We sail on... further south. To the second Balleny island. Is this one called Buckle Island? Then the third is Sabine Island: a flat rock, a pointy rock, a bigger island. I think that there are quite a few smaller, possibly unnamed, islands in the group.
The search for a landing site continues. Meanwhile, we are waiting for dinner at 7:30. I'll come back to the journal when we know more. Deb is playing patience, I may take over. We have yet to win a game. (I won't mention our ongoing rummy, where Deb is still winning.)
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The ship stops near Sabine Island. There's a colony of chinstrap penguins there. We're hoping to find a landing site -- but not expecting it.
Deb and I stand on deck using binoculars and telecopic camera lens to look towards the beach with the penguin colony. We can see brown area with whitish patches. That's good enough -- the white is probably a pack of penguins :-)
Later, 9:30pm, an expedition update: The sea is too rough to get from ship to rubber duckies. (It feels fine & bumpy in the ship but the last step -- ship to zodiac -- needs to be very steady.) There are no landing sites. (Some that may be okay -- if not for the dangerous swell.) So... that's it. We're heading north again.
btw: The Heritage expedition leader regularly makes the point that this is an "expedition". Not a guaranteed tour but a plan to do whatever we can in the area. And when one idea is blocked -- eg Mawson's hut cut off by solid pack ice -- the expedition sets a new goal. Hence the Balleny Islands.
Very few people visit the Balleny Islands. The sister ship -- Spirit of Enderby -- was here a week ago. They saw fog and storm. So we're lucky, we at least have good weather and a good view of the islands :-) And we have sailed south of the Antarctic Circle.
We've turned and are sailing north. Towards Campbell Island. Many more days of sailing. I'm disappointed to not have landed on Antarctica itself. (Time to start training for that Antarctic Ice Marathon ?!) I'm extremely pleased to have sailed south of the Antarctic Circle.
And we've seen plenty of penguins :-)
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