Latitudes

We left Macquarie Island in the afternoon of 16 February. We spent the next six days at sea. It is an awful long way from Macquarie to the Ross Sea!! It gave me time to adjust to the boat's movements. I had to learn to swivel my chair with the rocking of the boat while eating dinner. Actually getting the food into my mouth was still a challenge. I also learned to have a shower while holding on tightly with one hand. Especially when trying to wash hair it was occasionally necessary to let go, at which point I would firmly plant my feet wide on the slip-free mat in the shower and do the best I could. Thank goodness for yoga, which I have practiced for years and which involves balancing exercises. Still, drying oneself and getting dressed was a feat. The latter I did in the safety of my cabin bunk. Even brushing teeth proved difficult.

During our wild journey south all lectures and films were cancelled, the hatches were battened and even our porthole was closed. Very claustrophobic. By the evening of Wednesday the sea calmed a bit. At the announcement of the first iceberg! we all rushed up the three flights of stairs to see this wonder from the bridge.


On Thursday morning (19 February) more icebergs and so-called 'bergy bits' appeared on a slick and oily looking sea. We were shown a movie about 100 years of Antarctic exploration. What struck me most was what the Americans did. After many struggles, and deaths, for decades of English, German, Norwegian, Belgian, Australian explorers to reach the pole or to explore the continent, the Americans suddenly burst onto the scene by flying an aeroplane over the pole and dropping a flag tied to a stone from the plane. See here for a brief piece about the pilot Richard E. Byrd and here for a longer piece about Byrd's polar exploits. This expedition did actually a lot more than just fly over the pole and was also engaged in other research and aerial surveying of Antarctica. The Germans also surveyed Antarctica from the air and claimed parts of the continent by dropping metal swastikas to mark the boundaries. Thanks to the Antarctic Treaty, which was first signed in 1959 and came into force in 1961, the continent is now agreed to be international and a place for peaceful research (and tourism). Here is a Wikipedia entry about the treaty and here that of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (or SCAR). Finally here is the official web page of the Antarctic Treaty Secretariat. We received a lecture about this all important treaty, in preparation for our induction into the Antarctic community when we crossed the Antarctic Circle at 60° latitude. This crossing calls for a ceremony, just as crossing the equator does. It was short (because of the cold) and solemn in so far as we had to swear to protect Antarctica and its wildlife. We then received 'the mark of the penguin' (a penguin stamp on our foreheads) and a much needed cup of warm mulled wine.



We started to see our first whales, in the distance, just a tail and a curved back of a humpback whale and as we approached the Antarctic Circle I saw whales spouting as well.

On Saturday 21 February we were woken at 5am: Cape Adare was in sight. Cape Adare is the first tip of solid land and part of the continent one encounters on the journey south. It is a peninsula which lies on the northeastern most point of Victoria Land, East Antarctica. The cape separates the Ross Sea to the east from the Southern Ocean to the west. Behind are the high Admiralty Mountains. Cape Adare was an important landing site and base camp during the earliest Antarctic exploration. On it stands a hut from the 1899 Antarctic Expedition. But alas! we could not get near it because there was too much ice in the harbour.

We motored alongside and then turned back to enter the Ross Sea. Unlike what I've read about the Antarctic Peninsula (to which one journeys from South America), we were here not surrounded by pack ice or icebergs. It all looked very distant and desolate and forbidding. When we went deeper into the Ross Sea the water became oily and thickened; you could see ice forming in blobs. In the distance a rocky coast with ice tongues flowing down. In the further distance a pink sunny spot lit up a white snowy mountain. The landscape is so wide and awe inspiring - nothing can represent it properly. The evening red was spectacular.




It was very cold indeed. Waves that hit the deck froze before they could flow away and spray that hit the front windows of the bridge instantly froze: SPLOT! The spray on the portholes was also frozen. There was even ice on the inside of our pothole.

By Sunday evening 22 February we were expected to arrive in McMurdo Sound. The journey was becoming a little tedious. I was aware of feeling just a tad frazzled. We had not been on land for six days now! The days were punctuated by meals (eating far too much of wonderful food), lectures, documentaries, films and times standing on the bridge, watching the sea, in between periods of lying on our bunks reading or sleeping. Then we got a surprise: we were going to land on Franklin Island. It did not sound promising: a shingle beach, not very large, but it proved an unexpected pleasure. More next time.