DECEPTION ISLAND

10 PM Thurs, 14 Feb 08 (St. Valentine’s Day), MS Nordnorge, Deception Island

DECEPTION ISLAND

Deception Island is a volcano.
I found it light on snow.
Into its caldera we were sailing
To check out its station for whaling
While hoping it wouldn’t blow.

After sailing some 540 miles in about 33 hours from Cape Horn, we arrived inside the horseshoe (flooded caldera) of Deception Island about 8 PM today. There is dirty snow present on the island, but I expected a lot more of it. (More of the island’s rocky surface is bare.) It is quite foggy without rain except for a brief light mist. The wind is not severe at all. Considering that we are at the Antarctic Peninsula, I am surprised at how relatively warm it is. It’s comfortable walking around the deck with a long sleeved shirt and the windbreaker jacket that was issued to us. My guess is it’s about 45 F. We are anchored here in the crater for the night. There is what remains of an old whaling station here: rusty tanks, rusty boilers, and buildings that could collapse at any moment. I saw a rookery of penguins on a hill in the distance, visible with my binoculars. We will go ashore about 8 AM tomorrow for about an hour. There will be an opportunity to take a quick swim. I have read that the water is warm (warmed by the volcano), but the staff person who briefed us said it is not. I’ll wear my bathing suit under my clothes and decide at the last minute.

Tomorrow afternoon we’ll approach another island and go ashore there, weather permitting.

Last evening we viewed the black-and-white film “Around Cape Horn.” This is a film from the Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, Connecticut. It was filmed in 1929 by amateurs under short-handed and very dangerous conditions. It’s about a group of men who sailed a tall sailing vessel the old fashioned way entirely by manpower in severe weather. It’s amazing how they could do it and survive.

It was a beautiful day again today, clear or partly cloudy until we hit the fog as we approached the Antarctic Peninsula Islands. We have been spoiled and given an erroneous first-hand experience. We’re told how rough the seas and weather usually are. But that has not been our experience. In the open sea, even though it was unusually calm and I heard of no cases of sea sickness, there were swells and the boat rocked from side to side and from bow to stern. So it was impossible for a landlubber to walk straight! Today was smoother than yesterday.

Helen and I had a very long sleep last night. So I was able to stay wide awake for this morning’s two lectures, which were repeats for me. I fell asleep during one of them yesterday. That one was “All (or nearly all!) about whales and dolphins” by Petra Glardon. I took copious notes on the whale lecture today. The other was “Penguins: The brush-tailed-life and death” by Manuel Marin. Both were very informative and interesting.

This afternoon I attended the Christoph Hollger’s lecture “The Age of Discovery – to boldly go where no man has gone before.” I thought it was going to be about exploration of Antarctica. Instead it was about the discovery voyages to Antarctica. There were several such voyages. The coastline of Antarctica was pretty well established by 1835. Yet it wasn’t until 1895 that the first man, a Swede, actually set foot on the continent. All of our speakers have foreign accents. And I have a hearing problem. Most of them I can understand pretty well. But not Hollger. He’s a German educated at Cambridge who has a British accent.

This afternoon I greatly enjoyed Cecilia Malmstrom’s talk “Life at the South Pole Station.” Cecilia is a Swede. In 1993 at age 27 she was selected to serve four months as a research assistant at this U.S. station, which is at an elevation of 9,301 feet. It was a challenging proposition. The research she was involved with was measurement of neutrinos.

I walked an estimated six miles around deck 5 yesterday and again today. Most of today’s walk was this evening as we are parked on the quiet waters in the crater of Deception Island. But yesterday I did a very fast drunken sailor’s walk as the ship bobbed around on the swells.

Yesterday Helen fell asleep after buying a drink in the bar following our adventure ashore on Cape Horn, and she slept through lunch and most of the afternoon.

This afternoon Helen got sick in the stomach and slept through dinner. She said she thought it was due to something she ate and that it’s not sea sickness. When I mentioned possibly seeing the doctor on board, she said she isn’t sick. Later this evening she said she is OK, but she retired somewhat early. Maybe it’s the viral gastroenteritis that floats around cruise ship passengers. If it is that, it seems a mild case (nausea, I think, but not vomiting or diarrhea).

Helen did the laundry, and I had a look at the laundry room.

We had a look at the sauna and the gym. The gym consists of a few exercise machines in a small room without windows.

Helen and I were one of a handful of volunteers in a program to check out what small foreign items go to Antarctica on people’s clothing. We filled out a form, donned our jackets and ski pants, and they used a vacuum-cleaner-with-filter system to sample whatever may be on them.

The official money on board is the Norwegian Kroner. They also accept US dollars, British pounds, the Euro, Swedish Kroners, and Australian and Canadian money. They do not accept Chilean or Argentine money. We use our credit card.

Permanent postings on the ship are in Norwegian and English. For this cruise, the announcements, briefings, and lectures are made in English, German, and Swedish. In addition to Germans and Swedes, there are a few passengers from various other European countries. Today we sat at lunch with two couples from Sweden, and it was the first time we had the opportunity to get slightly acquainted with anyone not from the U.S.

:-)

Bernie