Up early and… foggy.
The winds might be low, but there’s significant swells and the visibility is next to nil. You can see the rocks crashing hard against the breakers at Point Wild, named after Frank Wild – Sir Ernest Shackleton’s second in command, who led the crew after Shackleton took a lifeboat and a handful of crew members 800 miles to South Georgia in search of help.
As one might expect, this does not bode well for our chances at making a zodiac cruise around Elephant Island – and it’s not long before Marieke is on the intercom informing us that we will be doing a sail-past instead.
It’s disappointing, but not unexpected. Only perhaps 30% of all visits to Elephant Island result in a zodiac cruise.
But Antarctica is full of surprises. We sail away, and the fog begins to lift – revealing Elephant Island in all its glory:
Then it was on to more important matters – like choosing a new pillow from Silversea’s pillow menu.
For several days, my wife has gone to bed having forgotten to order a new pillow, but today we remember and she orders two of the 20″ x 26″ Fairfax pillows – one for herself, and one for our daughter.
We continue along, and fin whales make an appearance:
And some gentoo penguins:
The ship pauses and an announcement is made – we are nearing a pod of fin whales. But I’m busy writing, and I expect them to drift past the port side. Plus I’m feeling vaguely burnt out after a morning of tromping up and down the stairs.
It’s one of the finest fin whale encounters our expedition team has ever seen. And I missed it. I’m disappointed, but that unfortunately is the reality of these kinds of cruises. Mistakes will be made.
Even those on the same ship can have vastly different experiences. It’s the same way others have felt about us seeing Stromness, or being the first to land at Saint Andrew’s Bay. The FOMO (fear of missing out) is very, very real.
Same ship, different trip. We have to make peace with that, or it’s going to ruin our expedition – and that would be tragic, as so very few people get to visit such pristine wilderness as this.
Off to lunch!
I had the roast beef sandwich to start:
While my wife had the fried camembert:
And then we both had the beef enchilada as our mains:
Then it was off to Jess’ lecture on The Truth About Penguins:
I was fascinated to learn that penguins have one of the lowest drag coefficients of any bird, and to hear Jess recount the ill-fated expedition to recover emperor penguin eggs based on the misconception that they were a key element in understanding evolution (the theory of recapitulations) – apparently some scientists once thought that embryos passed through all previous stages of evolution as they developed.
The adventurers who took part in the eventually-successful endeavour all went through horrible discomfort to secure the eggs, only for them to be ultimately worthless – the theory had been debunked, and the egg itself was in too early a stage of development to be useful to science.
This excellent lecture stands in stark contrast to our biggest gripe about this cruise, which is the lack of quality control when it comes to the Wind’s lectures. For every excellent lecture, there is generally another lecture that contains factual inaccuracies.
So far the biggest errors have been the notion that coniferous trees drop their leaves (those are deciduous trees and this was repeated numerous times during the lecture), that the cost of the 2022 expedition to find the sunken Endurance cost $10 billion (it was $10 million), and that the fin whale is the second largest animal on Earth (actually the second longest) – though to be fair they did eventually issue a correction on that.
Compared to our initial expeditions on the Cloud, fewer of the expedition guides seem to be scientists and more appear to be general guides or zodiac drivers – which is completely fine, but there needs to be some sort of centralized control when it comes to the lectures or we run the risk of our children having to unlearn some of the ‘facts’ after they return.
There also seem to be at least three recap lectures after each briefing, which is likely two recap lectures too many – but no one is forcing us to stay for those, so that boils down to personal preference.
We move on to trivia, where I believe we took third this time? It’s hard to keep track, and it ultimately doesn’t matter as our children have so many prize points that it will be difficult for them to close their drawers by the time the cruise is at an end.
Off for today’s briefing:
We’re planning to undertake zodiac cruises arond Intercurrence Island and Harry Island – originally we were expected to be in the Antarctic sound, but weather conditions there are looking terrible so we’re moving through as fast as possible.
Dinner at La Terrazza tonight, in which my wife was unfortunately served a badly overdone tenderloin and then some inedible cheese. It was one of those days in which the bloom sadly and suddenly came off Silversea’s rose, but we’re hopeful that tomorrow holds more in store.
At least that’s what this crooked sunset photo promises:
I’m also on the list for kayaking tomorrow! I have mixed feelings about this, given that our current record for kayaking on this cruise is currently 0 for 3 and it means I will have to wake up earlier than planned. But at least I will then be on the short list for future kayaking opportunities even if this one does not pan out.
Now out of the fin whale area, our pace increases greatly. The splash is so high it regularly goes beyond our fifth deck verandah. There’s an occasional thump or ping as ice chunks riccocet off the Wind’s hull. It’s at once exciting and deeply concerning.
Onward and downward – to the Antarctic peninsula!