Today feels like our first proper sea day of our combined Antarctica / Cape-to-Cape cruise, and we’re going to treat it as such.
Room service breakfast? Check.
Movie to watch while eating said breakfast? Check.
No particular place to be? Double check.
But even lazy days have their limits, so we eventually pry ourselves out of our staterooms and head to a lecture on Antarctic Paleontology:
I wasn’t there for long, as there was a coffee chat with Hotel Director Ozgur and Captain Sasha Kolosov where I further advocated for a ‘penguin plunge’ – some sort of modified version of the polar plunge that would work for our children. The wheels are in motion, though the Captain did make it clear would be no exemptions from Silversea’s regulations.
Back to the room to battle our age-old nemesis, homework. But there is light at the end of the tunnel – their school will soon be on a two-week March break, which should be sufficient time to catch up.
And in the mean time… golf putting! Our son was asked to design one of the ‘holes’, and made it fiendishly difficult by putting a bridge sideways in front of the maze hole. Balls frequently got stuck there, and fellow participants suggested that they were being lost to the troll under the bridge. All very good fun – and my son was thrilled to get second, particularly when his dad got third.
Off to lunch, where they had put on a German buffet:
My wife and kids ordered off the regular menu:
My wife had the coconut crusted scallops:
Back to the rooms for a bit more work, and then I headed off for another of Jess’s writing workshops – this one entitled, “You’re a poet and you don’t know it”.
We started by choosing a photo with particular meaning for us, and then writing out the words and phrases that sprang to mind as we remembered ourselves back in that moment. The goal was to let our minds run freely without feeling like we had to produce something that fits into the narrow confines of our finished work.
We then went back and circled some key words and phrases that came up as part of this process. We then used these to create a haiku based on our photo.
Here was my end result:
Stromness
Distant rusted shells
Former home and final hope
Refuge to refuse
I wanted to speak to both the role of Stromness as Shackleton’s salvation, but also the way I felt about seeing this historic whaling station at the end of such an eventful day.
The workshop was quite an effective exercise and an important reminder to take time to let the rough draft be rough.
Trivia was up next, and we managed to get a record 14/15, which was enough for first place. My son knew the number of letteres in the Greek alphabet (24), while I was able to solve the riddle as to which word has the same sound after you remove 4 of its five letters (queue).
Off the briefing, where we saw just how close we had come to A23a without result:
So close – 0.2 knots – and yet so far!
We are going to attempt a zodiac cruise of Elephant Island tomorrow, the island is exposed to the Drake passage so we will need both winds and swells to cooperate. Only 30% of Silversea visits result in launching zodiacs so we’ll just have to cross fingers and hope.
Off to dinner:
My wife had the barbary duck salad:
I had the calamari:
My wife had the cannelloni ai funghi:
And I had the brisket, which I somehow forgot to photograph. The cannelloni stole the show, however.
For dessert I had the strawberry yoghurt bombe:
My daughter had the coffee mousse:
With the strawberry and lemon fantasia as a backup dessert in case the first didn’t work out:
Back to our room where we perused the latest Chronicle:
No sunset photos from tonight, but here is a teaser from tomorrow:
