Ryan's Journal

"My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?" — David Mitchell

Southern Atlantic Ocean

Posted at 3:45 pm, January 12th, 2004

I woke up this morning and knew something was wrong. It was only after walking down the hallway without being violently thrown into a wall that I realized the seas had calmed and the boat had stopped rocking. Shortly thereafter we finished navigating a vast number of icebergs and set anchor in the South Orkney Islands. While anchoring Arnie nearly backed the ship into one of the ‘bergs, and only when the stern of the ship was about ten feet from the ‘berg did he casually say “Oops, hard to port.”

Our landing at Shingle Cove in the Orkneys was a nice one, although very cold and snowy. The adelie penguin colony that was there provided ample entertainment as the parents would return to feed the chicks, who would in turn rush the parents, overwhelming them and causing them to eventually flee the ravenous youngsters. The ensuing chaos in which adult penguins were wildly running everywhere with the chicks in hot pursuit was great fun to watch. We left just after noon, and will be making one last crossing before reaching the Antarctic Peninsula. The weather report is an ominous “very strong gale warning”, but at least for the moment the seas aren’t too rough.

One last note, while Rod was out on deck expounding on his belief that rather than burial or cremation he would prefer to be publicly blown up (“but people would be kept back so they wouldn’t have pieces of me splatter on them — that would be gross”) Tim made the observation that it wasn’t quite as cold if you stood downwind of Rod, seeing as there was so much hot air flowing out of the man. Gotta love the staff.

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