It was very quiet on the deck of the ship. There were lots of people there in the dark, watching the ship's crew work, but no one was saying anything except maybe in hushed tones. We could hear the water washing against the pier and the underside of our ship, a few bells, and the sounds of the sailors working, raising the anchor, releasing the moorings, watching carefully for anythng going wrong, and sometimes calling to each other in what sounded like Spanish. (Most of the sailors are Philipino, while the senior officers are British and Scandinavian.) The men on the Chilean warship docked at the other side of the pier were watching us, and one snapped a picture as the moorings were removed.
Watching the lights of Punta Arenas slowly slide away into the night, and feeling the ship begin to move into the darkness - the deep navy blue haze of the channel - was breathtaking.
I stood on the deck in the wind, looking ahead into what seemed an abyss of wind, light rain, and occasional whitecaps on the water becoming visible for brief flashes and then disappearing again.
Feeling the wind blowing through my hair as we began a trip that would ultimately take us to the coldest and most hostile waters on the planet was an exhilerating and deeply moving feeling. I felt like an ancient sailor or a passenger on an ancient sailor's boat as it began a journey into darkness and the unknown.
Even now, feeling the ship moving beneath us, powerfully and subtly, as I look out the window into darkness is wonderful. When night disappears and we're left with perpetual daylight, I wonder if it will feel the same?
I can forgive the other passengers for their lack of attention, and I can forgive them for their "visiting my seventh continent" mentality. I'm on this trip for myself, and it's going to be incredible, whether the other people feel it or not. I hope that ultimately they'll begin to feel the power of the trip we're making and learn respect for the spirit of the journey, and not just the simple accomplishment of visiting their seventh continent.
We are just about to enter the Beagle Channel finally (I thought we already had, but there's another name for the channel we were sailing earlier.)
I'm going to go walking the decks now, since the Beagle Channel is supposed to be spectacular. However, we seem to be in some fog now.
Earlier this morning (around 6:30am) we awoke because the ship began rolling quite a bit. (It was very stable last night.) We had entered the channel, but the wider areas caused the ship to roll heavily. We went back to sleep, and then things calmed down until a little later (around 7:30am). That's when I took the final pictures on the film roll before the introductions.
I dreamed in the early morning that I was on the Marco Polo, and that we were sailing through the streets of a town that had been flooded. The water was impossibly shallow for a ship this size, but it was rocking back and forth just like the ship is in reality. The rolling motion of the ship has clearly influenced my dreams.
I'm not at all seasick, although I understand now why some people would be. I find the rolling motion soothing, and only a little difficult to navigate through.
We saw one house or station flying the Chilean flag , and everything else was completely barren of any visible signs of humanity. This must be exactly the same as what Magellan, Drake, Darwin and the other early explorers saw when they came through (probably in the other direction).
The sun was kind enough to follow our ship through the channel, illuminating things just as we got to them. I took several pictures looking back, but few forward since the stuff in front is mostly hazy and dark.
My film is going way too fast. I should have bought twice as much Ektar. I'll have to stock up on 100 speed Kodak Gold from the ship now, to avoid the crunch when everyone else runs out.
The hills and mountains on the right of the ship have what appear to be sandy tops without much snow. They're not really as rocky as one would expect from a top that formerly held a glacier. On the left, however, they are very rocky and it is clear that glaciers have been there, carving out and grinding up the rock that forms the mountain. I suspect that the southern (right) side mountains probably have snow caps during the winter, but not enough to grind.
We've just been told that there will be a slight delay in getting into Ushuaia this afternoon. Instead of 4:00pm, they will not be letting us dock until 5:30. Big deal! I'm enjoying the time to get settled and watch the Beagle Channel go by. The clouds are low enough that they touch the tops of the mountains, which don't seem very high but must be anyway. In some places, the land meets the water abruptly, with steep cliffs and gushing waterfalls. At others, there are strips of land, even promontaries in places that reach out to the water and are covered with brownish-green terrain, very low bushes or weeds. No trees are visible anywhere. It's all bushes and grass. The water flows very swiftly through the channel, making one and two foot waves with whitecaps in the narrower places (where it's maybe a mile or half a mile wide). It's flowing back towards Chile.
A little while ago we passed a small town or village, with primitive-looking dwellings sprawled out along a smooth area of land decending to the water. It looked very much like a frontier town in the old west, like perhaps California looked when Los Angelos or San Francisco were settled. It's difficult to see how far back the mountains go. I assume all the way up the continent. (That is, I assume that these are the same Andes as everywhere else.)
We apparently went past Ushuaia on the far side of the channel, and then turnned around to go back toward it. While I was watching, the wind picked up incredibly. All of the dozens of people birdwatching left the deck, and I stayed there alone with my leather jacket zipped up, leather gloves on, and my pant legs whipping all around my legs and my hair flying around wildly in the wind. I recorded some impressions about Ushuaia on tape, including an account of a gunship that left there about the time we became visible to them, and came out to meet us, then passed us by going the other way. I took a picture of that ship also.
Ushuaia looks like a fairly nice place. I understand that they offer tax exempt status to foreign businesses, in order to attract business and additional commerce, as well as tourism. The people here are primarily employed in light industry, and the tourism industry is bursting. They are working on completing a new airport on the far left of town, as seen from the water of the channel. I watched a large jet land there earlier this afternoon/evening. I'm told that the old airport (which they're currently using) has a notoriously short runway, and that the new one is intended to make it possible for the really large jets to land there.
I met Ethan Berkowitz, the NSF observer, ealier today also, around 6:15 or so. I first met a fellow passenger, Diane, out on deck near the very front of the ship. It was extremely windy, so we took shelter just around the corner from the forward observation deck. Diane had been interested in coming to Antarctica for about 12 years, and we were discussing the activities at McMurdo, so we soon got to the topic of the USAP Science Program that I had, and she wanted to know how to get a copy. We decided that the NSF observer on board would know, so she decided to talk to him. Amazingly, he showed up on the deck soon afterward. We talked in the freezing cold and 30 knot wind for a while about the USAP and all that's going on. He said that McMurdo's program has been extended to go beyond the February 19th end date listed in the program, due to an exceptionally good year. He also said that the Williams Field work has been finished, and that they really only needed about 40 extra berths, not 200 as the EAM I found stated. He's a very nice person, fairly young it appears. He said that he finished his undergraduate thesis on Antarctic activities in 1983, which included a trip here (at least he implied that it did). During that time, he got to know a lot of the people there.
Our parkas were just delivered here at our cabin. We'll be going to dinner shortly.
Diane mentioned that she had thoroughy researched the Antarctic exploration possibilities for civilians, and that she knew another woman who had managed to get herself reassigned to McMurdo station as an administrative assistant/clerical worker and stayed the 9 winter months. What an experience!
At our table, we were joined by Ethan (the NSF observer -- another amazing coincidence) and Marty, a merchant marine passenger from San Diego. Marty was pretty quiet, but the rest of us kept Ethan talking about his work as an observer of the cruise.
Ethan went to undergraduate school at Harvard (or "Haavard", as Susan, another regular at our table, said it; she's from Boston). He got a Master's degree (in Law) from Cambridge, then went to Alaska to practice law, because he felt that it would be similar to Antarctica. By that time, he'd already been to Antarctica working on his undergraduate thesis. He has plenty of stories about Antarctica trips, and knows a lot about the NSF's work. He's primarily observing the ship's activities and it's status for the NSF, as well as the crew's work informing the passengers about the regulations, but he is also authorized to arrest Americans who refuse to obey the Antarctic Treaty regulations concerning Antarctic conduct. He said that he never really had to arrest anyone, since most people who go to Antarctica have a good attitude toward Antarctic conservation. A few years ago, he was aparently stationed at McMurdo, and he knew pretty much everyone involved in NSF-related work down there. He knew several people that Susan knew from the hospital in Boston where she works, since they had also been at McMurdo for some time.
He seems to be a nice guy, and I'm glad I met someone closer to my age on board. I'm hoping that I'll get to talk with him more during the trip. He certainly seems to be dedicated to the Antarctic spirit, which I admire.
Ethan said that he'd be surprised if we didn't get to land at McMurdo. He says that the weather is pretty good, and the research program has been extended so that they aren't leaving everything for the winter quite yet. He promised that if we didn't get to go, he'd play some videos for us about it. I'll keep him to it, if necessary!