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

Right Whale Bay, South Georgia Island

Posted at 10:15 pm, October 23rd, 2004

Sadly our last full day in South Georgia ended up being spent on the boat — we had a six hour drive from Fortuna to Elsehul, and along the way dropped Ted, Shane and Mike off to hike over to meet us. The weather wasn’t particularly nice when we dropped them off, and Jerome commented that “ils sont fous” shortly after leaving them. Pulling into Elsehul a couple of hours later we got a call on the satellite phone from Ted saying that the wind had dropped visibility to zero, so we made a U-turn and went back to pick them up. I had been joking with Jerome that he needed more sleep and should let me take the wheel, and he surprised me by taking me seriously, so for an hour I was doing my best not to get us all killed by scanning the waves for ice while being buffeted by sixty-mile per hour winds. In fairness the autopilot and GPS made the job a fairly easy one despite the weather, but it was still a hell of a way to learn to drive the boat.

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