OK – now that the potential for puking has passed, here are a few more pictures and videos from our stormy sea day yesterday. We left the Weddell Sea, passing by vast walls of giant tabular icebergs on both sides of the ship and crunching our way through sea ice like it was NBD. We’d been warned that the weather was starting to turn and to expect rough seas from 2pm until about 10pm – and it didn’t disappoint! I know it might be slightly odd to say this, but in a strange way, I was happy to experience some heavy seas – I was curious to see how well the ship would fare and what it would feel like.
Well, needless to say, the ship did absolutely fine – and I did OK-ish. I did feel a little green in the late afternoon, but managed to get through it without needing to take anything or my lunch escaping. Obviously because of the high winds and rolling waves, the outdoor decks were closed, so we spent most of the afternoon holed up in our cabin, me editing photos and ManpanionTM napping. (we were very grateful we’d had our igloo experience the night before as it would have been canceled tonight). In our cabins, you can listen to the lectures that are being presented in the Ice Lounge on the big telly, so we enjoyed two presentations – one about the Swedish South Polar Expedition of 1901-1903 and another entitled “Seals, Whales, Sea Ice and Poop”. We did leave the comfort of our cabin and venture upstairs to C Greens for afternoon tea and again for dinner, so at least these rough seas were not getting in the way of our dining schedule!!
After dinner, we watched a sobering documentary called “Chasing Ice” which describes the foundation of the Extreme Ice Project by a photographer who wanted to capture, in a very visual way, the impact of climate change – namely, the impact on the world’s glaciers. It was excellent – and if you are not alarmed at the end of watching this presentation, I don’t know what to tell you. By the time the documentary finished, the seas had started to calm down so by the time we finally went to bed, it was smooth sailing again. I had asked one of the wait staff at dinner how rough this was, compared to other heavy seas he’d experienced, and he just kinda smiled and shrugged and said “oh…this is not that bad- I’ve been in seas where the waves were 15m high – and they are only 5m high now, so….”. He left our imaginations to fill in the gaps! But anyway, today was interesting/fun to get a taste of what the Drake Shake could feel like – but I will still cross my fingers for a smooth ride back home in a few days!!
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I would have puked so hard, made me feel seasick just looking at it! Very impressive though!