We had fairly smooth sailing today. My anti-nausea patch fell off somewhere along the line and I didn’t notice its absence at all. Judy and I slept in and had breakfast at 9 AM. I had a sound drug-induced solid sleep. Judy had stayed up to see the A32a at 1:15 AM so she had a good excuse too. I spent the rest of the morning and into the afternoon getting caught up blog-wise. We did attend the daily briefing I mentioned yesterday. In addition to the weather discussion we learned about ice and albatrosses. Ice is really thick, blue ice is old ice and albatrosses are really big.

I never hear about albatrosses but I recall  photographing albatrosses through a really long telephoto lens in New Zealand. I added to the chum the skipper threw overboard to attract the albatrosses. I asked the skipper of the albatross boat if we were experiencing particularly rough seas. He said, “this is nothing. I once sailed all the way around Antarctica on a research ship. Now THAT was rough.” “Never me,” thought I. Yet here I am.

The big event of the day was our visit to South Orkney Islands. The expedition director sweet talked our captain into an expedition stop on the way to South Georgia. No Viking ship has ever been there and the schedule is tight due to the weather disruptions we’ve experienced. But the captain granted five hours: boats in the water, last boat on board. I think it got done in 5.5 hours.

The guy who named the place was a Scot and wanted to honor his home island chain, the Orkney islands. To the victor goes the naming rights, as they say.

We donned our gear, taking only three attempts to get into my life jacket, and reported to Zodiak Central on A Deck for our 3:30 departure. This was to be a touring hour; shore landings are not permitted here.

We saw chinstrap and gentoo penguins, fur seals (aka sea Lions) and southern elephant seals plus some Antarctic cormorants. We dodged rain that had been falling earlier so it was a very productive trip.

But as usual, the ice sculptures continually demanded our attention. Shingle Bay, where we operated, is full of glaciers, the kind that form at the top of a mountain and, as the snow compresses to form dense blue-colored ice, the whole thing slides down the mountain until it meets the sea. At that point the ice on the leading edge drops off, “calves,” to creat an iceberg plus shards of ice that float in the bay, just as we experienced yesterday. Unlike Antarctica where the glaciers tend to be part of a massive ice sheet, South Orkney has individual stand-alone glaciers. It reminded us of the glaciers we saw in Glacier Bay, Alaska.

We returned to our stateroom, did more blogging and movie creation and hit the chow line for dinner. Dinner was quite pleasant, up on Deck 5 with open views of the South Orkneys and icebergs floating by.  

Then an 8:30 performance, which was the first, and maybe only, stage entertainment event on this cruise. The act was a towering Hungarian solo violinist who played classical favorites, movie sound track songs, and even Frank Sinatra transcribed for the fiddle. Port wine and bourbon were served. Lots of fun!

Today the captain informed us that we’re going to experience more rough weather as we travers the open sea that is part of the Drake Passage. Never fear, I’ve got my patch ready to go so hopefully this won’t be as bad as last time.