A little wind and rain never gets in the way of a good time onboard. We had a very restful night in Dorian Cove with 4 lines to shore and excellent protection from ice wandering in. We awoke to grey skies, but no precipitation yet, so after breakfast almost everyone went ashore, including Casey to do his science. Those onshore went into Damoy Hut – an interesting contrast in time period with Port Lockroy. Damoy Hut was used as a base for the British airplane stop overs on the way further south in the peninsula. The Hut operated until 1993 or 1993. Its amazing to imagine the airplanes landing on the glacier. From there everyone took advantage of the relatively large space to wander and went exploring to the small ridge and then down to the penguins.
Back onboard, prior to lunch there was a taste test of the ginger soda from Palmer station – Lia, did amazingly well correctly guessing 4 out of the 5 flavors. I was very impressed. As lunch came so did the rain! Imagine rain in Antarctica. Its hard to imagine and we also wondered the effects on the chicks ashore. Hopefully because they were still small and snug under mom or dad they were going to weather the rain ok. It may of have been raining, but we spent an excellent afternoon – we watched the movie “Encounters at the End of the World”, a documentary made by an NSF artist in residence that follows various scientists based in McMurdo. Then Casey enlightened us with a presentation about Penguin Phenology (the timing of breeding around the peninsula) and what factors affect (or don’t affect the timing). Its not a very easy thing to nail down, as there are many competing factors – phytoplankton blooms, sea ice, snow cover, day light, etc. Erik also surprised us all with another lemon merengue pie – pretty much AMAZING.
We rounded out the afternoon with a game suggested by Guy – its sort of Scategories meets Matchability – a word, category guessing game. Many laughs and more than one or 2 “no” votes for people stretching the limits of categories – democracy in action.
Meanwhile you can often forget where you are. I left partway through the movie and entering my cabin and peering out the window, in the not so far distance there are penguins continuing to go about their business.
Erik manages every day to up the ante and for the evening meal he prepared an excellent lasagna, salad, and garlic bread, finished off with a fruit salad and cream. We use the excuse that we are starting to stock up on some calorie reserves for the Drake as a good reason to have an extra portion or 2.
Laura, Expedition Leader
