Sat, 16 Feb 02, MS Nordnorge, Neko Harbor , Antarctica
Helen’s stomach illness was for just half a day. She was/is fine yesterday and today.
Our planned Greenwich Island shore visit yesterday afternoon was cancelled because it was too windy.
We sailed all afternoon and evening and through the night down the Gerlach Straight to near the end of it and this morning anchored alongside Cuverville Island for morning shore visits there. Cuverville Island is close to Danco Island and “has the largest Gentoo penguin colony on the Antarctic Peninsula.”
Except for the wind, the weather was pretty good. Well, we never have had blue skies in Antarctic waters, and I don’t know how often blue skies are seen. It tends to be overcast, and the cloud cover tends to be low. We haven’t had significant fog.
The agenda called for afternoon shore visits today at Neko Harbor, which is within a few hours of sailing from Cuverville Island.
While sailing Friday afternoon, we saw a whale. It was said to be a humpback which, it is said, is the most likely whale so see here now. My reading is that when you see a whale, you usually don’t see much of it, but I saw a whale. (I saw it. Helen didn’t.)
I walked six miles Friday, most of it on board ship.
There was a fine lecture by a fine story teller in the afternoon. It was about the Antarctic exploration voyages of Sir Ernest Shackleton circa 1918. I had twice read about Shackleton’s amazing, miraculous survival voyage, most recently in one of my books about Antarctica on the airplane to Santiago.
SHACKLETON
Shackleton was an Antarctic man.
Survival was his plan.
His story is replete
With many a marvelous feat,
And he never lost a man.
Deception Island was not what we expected and was a bit of a disappointment in that it certainly wasn’t all snow and ice. Now we’ve gotten into what we expected Antarctica to be, i.e., lots of ice – beautiful ice.
The following information about Cuverville Island and Neko Harbor is copied from our handout for today:
“The Errara Channel is a scenic, narrow waterway between Ronge Island and the Arctowski Peninsula on the mainland. It was discovered by the Belgica expedition and named for Prefessor Leo Errera of the University of Brussels, a benefactor of the voyage. Errera is home to Danco and Cuverville Islands. Cuverville Island supports one of the largest known gentoo penguin colonies. This can be apparent from miles away given the right wind direction. Early in the season, snow cover impedes but doesn’t sop penguins accessing their nests and an intricate network of ‘penguin highways’ is carved into the snow. The shallow waters between Cuverville and Rogne’ islands often trap and ground icebergs. This makes for superb ship-cruising through the channel. Up from the rookery at Cuverville, steep cliffs lead to the island top. These cliffs should be avoided so as not to damage the moses and lichens that grow there. The cliffs are also home to skuas that are vigorous in defending their well-hidden nests.”
“Andvord Bay penetrates deep into the Antarctic Peninsula; from here the Weddell Sea side is a mere fifty kilometers (30 miles) away. Once inside the bay, one is surrounded on all sides by the mountains and alpine glaciers of the peninsula. The bay is splendidly scenic and fills with castellated icebergs and wildlife in the long days of summer. Nestled at the bottom of the bay is Neko Harbor, named for a whaling ship which anchored there in the early 1900s. Neko features an Angentine refuge hut and a gentoo penguin colony onshore. It is also one of the rare places in the Antarctic Peninsula area where one can come ashore on the Antarctic mainland. Please do not enter the refuge. Hike up the hill to the penguin rookery and an amazing view of Andvord Bay but do not continue onto the glacier as it is heavily crevassed. The glacier across the tiny harbor is very active and creates very impressive but dangerous waves when it calves – please stay off the beach.”
Miscellaneous:
The boat rides are fun. Fast! Hard bounces on the wakes and waves! Cold water sometimes splashes on you. Light, shallow draft, plastic bottom, big outboard engine. They have something like pontoons, filled with foam material, I’m told, not air.
It seems to me that the tour operators have a fairly large number of candidate places to visit and, in our case, make shore landings (planning “on the run” based on conditions). But I believe the general route along the Antarctic Peninsula is common to all tours that come here. It is illustrated on a map near the beginning of this blog.
I’m told some Antarctic cruises have no shore visits. They just cruise by as close as is safe and look from the ship; so we are fortunate.
The staff continually remind us to use sunscreen and sunglasses on shore visits even though it is cloudy. (High UV radiation.)
:-)
Bernie
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Friday, February 15, 2008
OUR CAPTAIN
An anonymous man is he
Who knows right well the sea.
Don’t know our captain’s name,
But we’ll have him to blame
If we sink into the sea.
Actually, I do know his name, but I only learned it this morning after writing this poem. First I happened to see the captain’s name briefly in fairly small print on a video screen. When I got around to writing it down a couple hours later, I had forgotten. So I asked the gal at the reception desk to write it for me. She had to call it up on her computer screen to spell it correctly. Our captain is Arnvid Hansen. Certainly sounds Norwegian, as it should.
This isn’t Love Boat. Nor is it like any of the other cruises I’ve been on in this respect.. No captain’s reception. No photos with the captain. The captain has never spoken to us or been introduced to us or mentioned or described to us or pointed out to us passengers. I’ve seen no photos of him. (It was the first officer who presided at the initial gathering where the rest of the crew was introduced.)
As we were docking at Port Williams, I looked up into the extended dock-side corner of the bridge and saw the captain. (One assumes the captain takes personal charge at such times.) I later saw him at lunch at the table reserved for the ship’s officers.
:-)
Who knows right well the sea.
Don’t know our captain’s name,
But we’ll have him to blame
If we sink into the sea.
Actually, I do know his name, but I only learned it this morning after writing this poem. First I happened to see the captain’s name briefly in fairly small print on a video screen. When I got around to writing it down a couple hours later, I had forgotten. So I asked the gal at the reception desk to write it for me. She had to call it up on her computer screen to spell it correctly. Our captain is Arnvid Hansen. Certainly sounds Norwegian, as it should.
This isn’t Love Boat. Nor is it like any of the other cruises I’ve been on in this respect.. No captain’s reception. No photos with the captain. The captain has never spoken to us or been introduced to us or mentioned or described to us or pointed out to us passengers. I’ve seen no photos of him. (It was the first officer who presided at the initial gathering where the rest of the crew was introduced.)
As we were docking at Port Williams, I looked up into the extended dock-side corner of the bridge and saw the captain. (One assumes the captain takes personal charge at such times.) I later saw him at lunch at the table reserved for the ship’s officers.
:-)
WHALER'S BAY
Fri 15 Feb 08, MS Nordnorge, Whaler’s Bay, Deception Island, Antarctica
Quoting from today’s handout:
“In February 1819, British merchant William Smith was rounding Cape Horn in his Brig Williams when he was blown south by a storm and first sighted the South Shetland Islands. Smith was promptly made the pilot of his own ship as the British authorities in Valparaiso placed aboard naval Captain Edward Bransfield. Together Bransfield and Smith surveyed the islands naming them for their similarity in latitude to Scotland’s Shetland Islands. They then crossed Bransfield’s eponymous strait and sighted the Antarctic Peninsul a. This was considered for many years to be the first known sighting of Antarctica. However, an ethnic German from Estonia working for the Russian Navy named Thaddeus Thaddevich von Bellingshausen had unknowingly beaten them by three days. Being a Russian ship captain, Bellingshausen was working off the ten-month Julian calendar and it wasn’t until the 1940’s when his work was translated into the twelve-month Gregorian calendar that this prior claim was discovered.”
“A portion of the wall of the volcanic caldera of Deception Island has collapsed, flooding the interior and creating an amazing natural harbor. Access to the interior is through the 200 meter-wide (660 feet) entrance known as Neptune’s Bellows, so named for the winds which howl through. There is a rock in the middle just under the water and the area to one side is foul. Therefore the ship will have only 100 meters (330 feet) with which to navigate. Once safely through the Bellows, Whalers Bay will begin to appear off the starboard side of the ship. Whalers Bay was home to factory whaling ships as early as 1905. A shore station named Hektor was set up in 1912 to process the meat and bones left behind by the ships. The station closed in 1931 after modern additions to the factory ships allowed them to render the entire whale. During Operation Tabarin in 1941, the British built Base “B”. Both the base and station were finally destroyed by a mudslide during the eruption, which lasted from 1967-69.”
We were in the first wave of boatloads ashore at about 8 AM this morning. There is a rotation system. We are in group 2. Next time we will be the last to go ashore. We were the second at Cape Horn. People were put ashore for about an hour. It takes two or three hours to give everybody a turn. As earlier folks are returning, later folks are just going out or still waiting. It’s a big operation. 300 passengers at 8 per load is 38 boat loads. There are two or three – I’m not sure how many – boats working simultaneously. They have this down to an efficient system: You file through and put on your boots (belonging to the ship); they help you don your life jacket; they scan your ID card; you walk through a disinfectant bath, and you board the shore craft. At the other end, they help you off the boat, and later help you back on. The above process in reversed when you return to the ship.
They’re not really Zodiac boats, not pontoon boats. They have an outboard motor and are really fast.
I have been remarking how relatively warm it is. And I think it is maybe 45 F, certainly no lower than 40 F. I was heavily dressed. I thought I was overdressed. Yet I was cold – but not extremely cold – ashore. The wind was blowing fiercely. It was raining when Helen and I were ashore. I was ashore about 80 minutes. I walked around and took pictures. I don’t expect much of the pictures because of the rain. I had only athletic cotton socks on my hands – when I wasn’t photographing. So my hands got cold, and my fingers didn’t work well for a while after I got back on the boat. I have a pair of warm ski gloves, but Helen had them as extras, and we got separated, having come on separate boats. I have a pair of very warm ski mittens but had left them in our cabin. Our “water proof clothing” proved to be not waterproof at all. Helen and I were wearing tights under our ski pants. They soaked through. My upper body got a little wet. Of course, my hands were wet. I had carried a long-sleeved cotton running shirt tied around my waste. I wrapped that around one hand.
No, I didn’t swim. Yes, there were those who did swim, both men and women. Not many percentage wise. Yet a steady slow stream of swimmers. (Quick dippers, really, they waded out on the shallow, gradually sloped beach.) I was cold enough out there heavily dressed. And I don’t even like swimming pool water. I dipped my finger in the water, and it was NOT warm. Some of the staff, well dressed, seemed uncomfortable standing around in the cold. I watched some of the swimmers and took some pictures of them. A staff member asked my if I intended to swim. I said “I don’t know.” She advised me not to. She said it was dangerous. She didn’t explain in what way, nor did I ask. I took her advice. I know one of our men in the Vantage group, Ron from near Philly, was hell-bent on swimming, and he did. Otherwise I doubt any of our Vantage people swam. I have the feeling that the swimmers were mostly Swedes. Well, some people are more able to withstand that than I am.
I didn’t see any penguins. One friend saw one penguin in the water while ashore. Someone mentioned seeing some fur seals on shore from the ship, but I did not.
I walked around ashore and looked at the old buildings, one of which was a hangar for small aircraft. I looked at the old rusty steel equipment. I walked up the hill quite a ways for the view out over the bay. There is a “cemetery” of two graves with crosses. There is a little creek you have to wade across. Of course we all had rubber boots on. There is no visible plant life whatsoever. Just volcanic ash – course sand, you might call it.
In our cabin we have clothes hung to dry from every place we could find to hang them from.
It’s lunch time. Helen has been napping. The boat seems to have started moving, exiting Whalers Bay.
:-)
Bernie
I heard during lunch that there may have been 50 swimmers and three or four of them were from our Vantag group. Now we’re sailing toward an island called Greenwich Island, which I haven’t seen on a map but it’s somewhere near Livingston Island and Half Moon Island. We expect to be there about 4 PM for another shore visit. Maybe some of our outdoor clothes will be dry by then.
Quoting from today’s handout:
“In February 1819, British merchant William Smith was rounding Cape Horn in his Brig Williams when he was blown south by a storm and first sighted the South Shetland Islands. Smith was promptly made the pilot of his own ship as the British authorities in Valparaiso placed aboard naval Captain Edward Bransfield. Together Bransfield and Smith surveyed the islands naming them for their similarity in latitude to Scotland’s Shetland Islands. They then crossed Bransfield’s eponymous strait and sighted the Antarctic Peninsul a. This was considered for many years to be the first known sighting of Antarctica. However, an ethnic German from Estonia working for the Russian Navy named Thaddeus Thaddevich von Bellingshausen had unknowingly beaten them by three days. Being a Russian ship captain, Bellingshausen was working off the ten-month Julian calendar and it wasn’t until the 1940’s when his work was translated into the twelve-month Gregorian calendar that this prior claim was discovered.”
“A portion of the wall of the volcanic caldera of Deception Island has collapsed, flooding the interior and creating an amazing natural harbor. Access to the interior is through the 200 meter-wide (660 feet) entrance known as Neptune’s Bellows, so named for the winds which howl through. There is a rock in the middle just under the water and the area to one side is foul. Therefore the ship will have only 100 meters (330 feet) with which to navigate. Once safely through the Bellows, Whalers Bay will begin to appear off the starboard side of the ship. Whalers Bay was home to factory whaling ships as early as 1905. A shore station named Hektor was set up in 1912 to process the meat and bones left behind by the ships. The station closed in 1931 after modern additions to the factory ships allowed them to render the entire whale. During Operation Tabarin in 1941, the British built Base “B”. Both the base and station were finally destroyed by a mudslide during the eruption, which lasted from 1967-69.”
We were in the first wave of boatloads ashore at about 8 AM this morning. There is a rotation system. We are in group 2. Next time we will be the last to go ashore. We were the second at Cape Horn. People were put ashore for about an hour. It takes two or three hours to give everybody a turn. As earlier folks are returning, later folks are just going out or still waiting. It’s a big operation. 300 passengers at 8 per load is 38 boat loads. There are two or three – I’m not sure how many – boats working simultaneously. They have this down to an efficient system: You file through and put on your boots (belonging to the ship); they help you don your life jacket; they scan your ID card; you walk through a disinfectant bath, and you board the shore craft. At the other end, they help you off the boat, and later help you back on. The above process in reversed when you return to the ship.
They’re not really Zodiac boats, not pontoon boats. They have an outboard motor and are really fast.
I have been remarking how relatively warm it is. And I think it is maybe 45 F, certainly no lower than 40 F. I was heavily dressed. I thought I was overdressed. Yet I was cold – but not extremely cold – ashore. The wind was blowing fiercely. It was raining when Helen and I were ashore. I was ashore about 80 minutes. I walked around and took pictures. I don’t expect much of the pictures because of the rain. I had only athletic cotton socks on my hands – when I wasn’t photographing. So my hands got cold, and my fingers didn’t work well for a while after I got back on the boat. I have a pair of warm ski gloves, but Helen had them as extras, and we got separated, having come on separate boats. I have a pair of very warm ski mittens but had left them in our cabin. Our “water proof clothing” proved to be not waterproof at all. Helen and I were wearing tights under our ski pants. They soaked through. My upper body got a little wet. Of course, my hands were wet. I had carried a long-sleeved cotton running shirt tied around my waste. I wrapped that around one hand.
No, I didn’t swim. Yes, there were those who did swim, both men and women. Not many percentage wise. Yet a steady slow stream of swimmers. (Quick dippers, really, they waded out on the shallow, gradually sloped beach.) I was cold enough out there heavily dressed. And I don’t even like swimming pool water. I dipped my finger in the water, and it was NOT warm. Some of the staff, well dressed, seemed uncomfortable standing around in the cold. I watched some of the swimmers and took some pictures of them. A staff member asked my if I intended to swim. I said “I don’t know.” She advised me not to. She said it was dangerous. She didn’t explain in what way, nor did I ask. I took her advice. I know one of our men in the Vantage group, Ron from near Philly, was hell-bent on swimming, and he did. Otherwise I doubt any of our Vantage people swam. I have the feeling that the swimmers were mostly Swedes. Well, some people are more able to withstand that than I am.
I didn’t see any penguins. One friend saw one penguin in the water while ashore. Someone mentioned seeing some fur seals on shore from the ship, but I did not.
I walked around ashore and looked at the old buildings, one of which was a hangar for small aircraft. I looked at the old rusty steel equipment. I walked up the hill quite a ways for the view out over the bay. There is a “cemetery” of two graves with crosses. There is a little creek you have to wade across. Of course we all had rubber boots on. There is no visible plant life whatsoever. Just volcanic ash – course sand, you might call it.
In our cabin we have clothes hung to dry from every place we could find to hang them from.
It’s lunch time. Helen has been napping. The boat seems to have started moving, exiting Whalers Bay.
:-)
Bernie
I heard during lunch that there may have been 50 swimmers and three or four of them were from our Vantag group. Now we’re sailing toward an island called Greenwich Island, which I haven’t seen on a map but it’s somewhere near Livingston Island and Half Moon Island. We expect to be there about 4 PM for another shore visit. Maybe some of our outdoor clothes will be dry by then.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
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
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
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
CABO HORNOS
13 Feb 08. 12 Noon, Leaving Cape Horn
CAPE HORN
The weather was in perfect shape
When we set foot on the cape.
(It wasn’t as though
It was sleet and snow
And a problem to escape.)
The sea was like a placid lake.
Many photos I was pleased to take
Under the sky sunny bright.
What a glorious sight
Upon which to wake!
A perfect day like this must surely be rare at Cape Horn. We went ashore with the little Zodiac boats, about a dozen people to a load. We climbed up the long steep steps, walked the boardwalks over the tundra on the top of the cape, and checked out the albatross memorial and the light house. We stayed up there a long time, and I took a ton of pictures. When we get home I plan to put them on a disk and mal it to Dick Fuller who asked me to take some pictures of Cape Horn which, he said, had always interested him as a recreational sailor.
From our handout for today: “Cape Horn was discovered in January, 1616 by Dutchmen Jakob Le Maire and Willem Schouten, sailing in the Unity. They named the cape for their ship Hoorn, which had accidentally burned at Puerto Deseado on the Patagonian coast. Horn Island, of which the famous cape forms the southernmost headland, is just eight kilometers (5 miles) long. Te cape itself rises to 424 meters with striking black cliffs on its upper parts. A monument in the form of a large relief sculpture depicts an albatross in flight. It commemorates those lost at sea. A poem by Sara Vial is engraved on a metal plaque nearby.”
We started our visits to Cape Horn about 8 AM and got under way on the Drake Passage toward Antarctica about 11 AM..
Bernie
:-)
CAPE HORN
The weather was in perfect shape
When we set foot on the cape.
(It wasn’t as though
It was sleet and snow
And a problem to escape.)
The sea was like a placid lake.
Many photos I was pleased to take
Under the sky sunny bright.
What a glorious sight
Upon which to wake!
A perfect day like this must surely be rare at Cape Horn. We went ashore with the little Zodiac boats, about a dozen people to a load. We climbed up the long steep steps, walked the boardwalks over the tundra on the top of the cape, and checked out the albatross memorial and the light house. We stayed up there a long time, and I took a ton of pictures. When we get home I plan to put them on a disk and mal it to Dick Fuller who asked me to take some pictures of Cape Horn which, he said, had always interested him as a recreational sailor.
From our handout for today: “Cape Horn was discovered in January, 1616 by Dutchmen Jakob Le Maire and Willem Schouten, sailing in the Unity. They named the cape for their ship Hoorn, which had accidentally burned at Puerto Deseado on the Patagonian coast. Horn Island, of which the famous cape forms the southernmost headland, is just eight kilometers (5 miles) long. Te cape itself rises to 424 meters with striking black cliffs on its upper parts. A monument in the form of a large relief sculpture depicts an albatross in flight. It commemorates those lost at sea. A poem by Sara Vial is engraved on a metal plaque nearby.”
We started our visits to Cape Horn about 8 AM and got under way on the Drake Passage toward Antarctica about 11 AM..
Bernie
:-)
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
PUERTO WILLIAMS
10 PM, 12 Feb 08 (Super Tuesday), MS Nordnorge, Puerto Williams, Chile
PUERTO WILLIAMS
It’s a pleasure to recall
The Port Williams waterfall
And the fun we were having
Watching a glacier calving
And sea lions by a fjord wall.
It’s been a big day and a very good day.
We had very good weather again today. It didn’t rain except for an occasional sprinkling. There was hardly any wind. And it was fairly warm.
I guesstimate that I walked six miles today, nearly all of it on shore.
We entered the west end of the Beagle Channel early in the morning. Midmorning we sailed up a side cove off the Beagle Channel, at the end of which we viewed a fine glacier called the Pia Glacier. Everybody was watching. We were there quite a while. I took lots of photos. The ship actually rotated around a few revolutions in place on its axis. Helen and I saw a glacier in Alaska in 1999, and it was larger than this one, but we stood back farther from it.
On the way out of the cove we saw some sea lions lying on rocks next to the water. The big almost black male was lying by himself apart from the group of smaller more brownish females.
We had a mandatory briefing about Antarctica and also about Cape Horn where, if conditions permit, we will land (via small Zodiac boats) about 8 AM tomorrow morning. If we can’t land there, we will at least be given the opportunity to see it. Mainly the Antarctica briefing was about ecological controls, but it also covered some operational matters. Ecological rules are not only a common sense and a “do good” matter. They are international law. There is a treaty organization of some 44 nations, and each nation has incorporated the requirements into its laws. And one of these nations is Norway, where the Nordnorge is registered, making the laws applicable to its staff. Another organization of interest is the International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators (IAATO), of which Hurtigruten is a member, as are 95% of the Antarctic tour operating companies.
Our Vantage coordinator for the whole trip, “Nacho,” who is Argentinian, gave us a lecture full of information about gauchos and also about the drink called mati.
We had a lecture from Christoph Hollger on “Cape Horn’s significance in the history of world traffic and trade.” It was interesting and jam packed with information. I stayed wide awake, but I’m sure I could latch onto more of it if I could hear it a second time. More than 800 ships and more than 6,000 lives have been lost in attempts to sail around the Horn. Its name stems from the city of Horn in the Netherlands. (It was discovered in 1616 by two Dutchmen.)
The MS Nordnorge docked at Puerto Williams about 5:30 PM. The dock can accommodate exactly one boat as large as ours. We leave again just before midnight. There were three options: an expensive tour to the national park, which we declined, the only tour we’ve declined on the trip; just walking around town; and a free guided hike on a gravel road to a waterfall. We joined the hike to the waterfall. It was about 3 miles round trip. That hike was plenty for Helen. Then I walked around town after that and came in and had dinner, the buffet still being open, at 8:45.
Port Williams, population about 1,500, is the southernmost town in the world and a Chilean naval base. It’s a picturesque little town that I think is reminiscent of Alaska and Norway. It is surrounded by natural beauty (mountains and the waters of the Beagle Channel).
The water falls were actually a disappointment, especially after the spectacular Salto Grande we saw a couple days ago. They are nice enough, but they just involve a small stream in the woods. It seems like all of the trees in the forest, large, medium, and small, are beech.
By American standards, Puerto Williams is definitely not prosperous. The streets are gravel. The homes that I saw are shabby. Well, I thought the homes I saw in Puerto Natales were shabby too, but not quite as much so. I haven’t had much of a look at ordinary residential districts in other Chilean cities and towns for comparison.
The front of the bow of the tug boat Yelcho that rescued Shackleton’s 22 men from Elephant Island is on display, and I found and photographed it.
There is a famous and really, really quaint little bar, and we had a look inside. It is called The Yacht Club, and it is in a very old grounded naval vessel; perhaps it’s a destroyer.
------------------------------------------------
The food is great on this ship, and I’m eating a lot of it. Especially the deserts are delicious, with several kinds to choose from at noon and at dinner, and they’re put out in case you’d like some between meals.
Sailing in these waters has at times been reminiscent of the Inland Passage in Alaska. They are more like that than they are like the fjords or Norway or the fjords of New Zealand.
:-)
Bernie
PUERTO WILLIAMS
It’s a pleasure to recall
The Port Williams waterfall
And the fun we were having
Watching a glacier calving
And sea lions by a fjord wall.
It’s been a big day and a very good day.
We had very good weather again today. It didn’t rain except for an occasional sprinkling. There was hardly any wind. And it was fairly warm.
I guesstimate that I walked six miles today, nearly all of it on shore.
We entered the west end of the Beagle Channel early in the morning. Midmorning we sailed up a side cove off the Beagle Channel, at the end of which we viewed a fine glacier called the Pia Glacier. Everybody was watching. We were there quite a while. I took lots of photos. The ship actually rotated around a few revolutions in place on its axis. Helen and I saw a glacier in Alaska in 1999, and it was larger than this one, but we stood back farther from it.
On the way out of the cove we saw some sea lions lying on rocks next to the water. The big almost black male was lying by himself apart from the group of smaller more brownish females.
We had a mandatory briefing about Antarctica and also about Cape Horn where, if conditions permit, we will land (via small Zodiac boats) about 8 AM tomorrow morning. If we can’t land there, we will at least be given the opportunity to see it. Mainly the Antarctica briefing was about ecological controls, but it also covered some operational matters. Ecological rules are not only a common sense and a “do good” matter. They are international law. There is a treaty organization of some 44 nations, and each nation has incorporated the requirements into its laws. And one of these nations is Norway, where the Nordnorge is registered, making the laws applicable to its staff. Another organization of interest is the International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators (IAATO), of which Hurtigruten is a member, as are 95% of the Antarctic tour operating companies.
Our Vantage coordinator for the whole trip, “Nacho,” who is Argentinian, gave us a lecture full of information about gauchos and also about the drink called mati.
We had a lecture from Christoph Hollger on “Cape Horn’s significance in the history of world traffic and trade.” It was interesting and jam packed with information. I stayed wide awake, but I’m sure I could latch onto more of it if I could hear it a second time. More than 800 ships and more than 6,000 lives have been lost in attempts to sail around the Horn. Its name stems from the city of Horn in the Netherlands. (It was discovered in 1616 by two Dutchmen.)
The MS Nordnorge docked at Puerto Williams about 5:30 PM. The dock can accommodate exactly one boat as large as ours. We leave again just before midnight. There were three options: an expensive tour to the national park, which we declined, the only tour we’ve declined on the trip; just walking around town; and a free guided hike on a gravel road to a waterfall. We joined the hike to the waterfall. It was about 3 miles round trip. That hike was plenty for Helen. Then I walked around town after that and came in and had dinner, the buffet still being open, at 8:45.
Port Williams, population about 1,500, is the southernmost town in the world and a Chilean naval base. It’s a picturesque little town that I think is reminiscent of Alaska and Norway. It is surrounded by natural beauty (mountains and the waters of the Beagle Channel).
The water falls were actually a disappointment, especially after the spectacular Salto Grande we saw a couple days ago. They are nice enough, but they just involve a small stream in the woods. It seems like all of the trees in the forest, large, medium, and small, are beech.
By American standards, Puerto Williams is definitely not prosperous. The streets are gravel. The homes that I saw are shabby. Well, I thought the homes I saw in Puerto Natales were shabby too, but not quite as much so. I haven’t had much of a look at ordinary residential districts in other Chilean cities and towns for comparison.
The front of the bow of the tug boat Yelcho that rescued Shackleton’s 22 men from Elephant Island is on display, and I found and photographed it.
There is a famous and really, really quaint little bar, and we had a look inside. It is called The Yacht Club, and it is in a very old grounded naval vessel; perhaps it’s a destroyer.
------------------------------------------------
The food is great on this ship, and I’m eating a lot of it. Especially the deserts are delicious, with several kinds to choose from at noon and at dinner, and they’re put out in case you’d like some between meals.
Sailing in these waters has at times been reminiscent of the Inland Passage in Alaska. They are more like that than they are like the fjords or Norway or the fjords of New Zealand.
:-)
Bernie
INDIANS AND THE BEAGLE
Tuesday Morning, 12 Feb 08, MS Nordnorge, Beagle Channel
WAYSOUTH INDIANS
In the south south lived natives crude,
Greased with fat and mostly nude.
Some were foot Indians;
Some were canoe Indians,
And their women dove for seafood.
They live in pictures that we see.
Otherwise they’re history,
Wiped out by blights
Because of some whites
Such as we.
Yesterday was spent entirely at sea. We downloaded our pictures to our computer, erased them from our main photo card, and charged our camera batteries. In three sections, I walked a total of at least six miles on the deck. The weather and seas continued amazingly moderate for this area although we’ve seen some whitecaps and experienced some rocking of the ship. In the morning we attended a lecture by Rosita Dorflinger titled “People at the end of the world – the natives of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego.” In the afternoon Helen attended Stefan Kredel’s lecture on plate tectonics for the second time while I attended the WONDERFUL telling of the very interesting story of “Darwin, Fitzroy and the Beagle” by a first rate storyteller, Jim Garlinghouse. In the evening we viewed a National Geographic Movie about volcanoes; I kept falling asleep; Helen kept waking me up, and I was too sleepy afterward to write my blog entry.
The circa 1828 story of the Beagle involves its first Captain, Pringle Stokes, who committed suicide after locking himself in his cabin and brooding for a couple weeks over his failure to do a good job in his assignment to map the region. It involves the new second captain Robert Fitzroy and the naturalist Charles Darwin. They were opposites and didn’t get along at all, but Darwin always supported Fitzroy because Fitzroy was an honest man, an attitude not reciprocated. Fitzroy, too, committed suicide many years later, thinking he had been a failure in his career. The story also involves some missionaries maltreated and killed by the Indians. And it involves four Yamana Indians (English names Jimmy Button, York Minster, Fuegia Basket and Boat Memory) kidnapped by Fitzroy, taken to England to be educated and Christianized and who were returned except for Boat Memory who died of smallpox. Darlinghouse encouragd us to read Darwin’s “The Voyage of the Beagle,” and I hope someday to do so.
The Indians were nomads who subsisted by hunting, fishing, and gathering. There were five tribes of them, each in its region within the region. (Ona, Alacalufe, Yamana, Hausch, and Tuelhueche) There were Foot Indians, and there were Canoe Indians who lived on and from the sea. The Indians were essentially nude and stayed warm by greasing themselves with animal fat. That worked for them though it made them smell bad. Clothing would not have worked for them because it would get wet and consequently remain cold. The coming of the missionaries in the mid 1800s was the beginning of the end for the Indians. We were told the full-blooded Indians are extinct or essentially so with, in some cases, only one or two old members of a tribe remaining. But maybe it’s not quite that extreme. This is in one of our handouts: “While the Alacalufe and Tuelhueche survived in reduced numbers, there remain very few individuals of indentifiable Ona, Haush or Yaghan (Yamana) populations.” In any case, it’s very sad about the Indians.
It’s high time for me to clean up and go to breakfast.
Bernie
:-)
WAYSOUTH INDIANS
In the south south lived natives crude,
Greased with fat and mostly nude.
Some were foot Indians;
Some were canoe Indians,
And their women dove for seafood.
They live in pictures that we see.
Otherwise they’re history,
Wiped out by blights
Because of some whites
Such as we.
Yesterday was spent entirely at sea. We downloaded our pictures to our computer, erased them from our main photo card, and charged our camera batteries. In three sections, I walked a total of at least six miles on the deck. The weather and seas continued amazingly moderate for this area although we’ve seen some whitecaps and experienced some rocking of the ship. In the morning we attended a lecture by Rosita Dorflinger titled “People at the end of the world – the natives of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego.” In the afternoon Helen attended Stefan Kredel’s lecture on plate tectonics for the second time while I attended the WONDERFUL telling of the very interesting story of “Darwin, Fitzroy and the Beagle” by a first rate storyteller, Jim Garlinghouse. In the evening we viewed a National Geographic Movie about volcanoes; I kept falling asleep; Helen kept waking me up, and I was too sleepy afterward to write my blog entry.
The circa 1828 story of the Beagle involves its first Captain, Pringle Stokes, who committed suicide after locking himself in his cabin and brooding for a couple weeks over his failure to do a good job in his assignment to map the region. It involves the new second captain Robert Fitzroy and the naturalist Charles Darwin. They were opposites and didn’t get along at all, but Darwin always supported Fitzroy because Fitzroy was an honest man, an attitude not reciprocated. Fitzroy, too, committed suicide many years later, thinking he had been a failure in his career. The story also involves some missionaries maltreated and killed by the Indians. And it involves four Yamana Indians (English names Jimmy Button, York Minster, Fuegia Basket and Boat Memory) kidnapped by Fitzroy, taken to England to be educated and Christianized and who were returned except for Boat Memory who died of smallpox. Darlinghouse encouragd us to read Darwin’s “The Voyage of the Beagle,” and I hope someday to do so.
The Indians were nomads who subsisted by hunting, fishing, and gathering. There were five tribes of them, each in its region within the region. (Ona, Alacalufe, Yamana, Hausch, and Tuelhueche) There were Foot Indians, and there were Canoe Indians who lived on and from the sea. The Indians were essentially nude and stayed warm by greasing themselves with animal fat. That worked for them though it made them smell bad. Clothing would not have worked for them because it would get wet and consequently remain cold. The coming of the missionaries in the mid 1800s was the beginning of the end for the Indians. We were told the full-blooded Indians are extinct or essentially so with, in some cases, only one or two old members of a tribe remaining. But maybe it’s not quite that extreme. This is in one of our handouts: “While the Alacalufe and Tuelhueche survived in reduced numbers, there remain very few individuals of indentifiable Ona, Haush or Yaghan (Yamana) populations.” In any case, it’s very sad about the Indians.
It’s high time for me to clean up and go to breakfast.
Bernie
:-)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)