A sailor went to sea, sea, sea… And what a brilliant decision that was! Today I found a brand new wrinkle from smiling. Here’s why:
Christmas carols were playing as Ocean Tramp and her intrepid adventurers woke up in an active volcano, hoisted the anchor, and motored towards the waters between Deception Island and Trinity Island – what was supposed to be a 7-8 hour motor sail, with an ETA of 6pm.
Upon beginning our transit, there was not a breath of wind and we needed to motor – the perfect opportunity for a shower! As I dressed feeling like the cleanest and best smelling human on earth, I heard the motor slow and footsteps running out on deck… Strange. I dressed quickly and ran up on deck with a towel on my wet head to WHALES. EVERYWHERE. Oh gosh oh wow no words to explain the next 60 seconds.
In every direction I looked we were surrounded by blowing, feeding, rolling, curious humpback whales. So close you could touch them, whales blew bubbles and popped unexpectedly up around the boat – you could feel their blows on your face and smell their fishy breath. I looked around at unbelieving faces, eyes watering and jaws dropping. Swarms of krill could be seen on the surface of the water near the yacht, clearly indicating their sycronised foraging around us. If you – like me – have never heard a whale groan, it was best explained by our whale scientist as “35 tonnes of satisfaction”. What a phenomenal experience, all before lunchtime!
After half an hour of excited squeals, “aw’s” and “aaaaahhh’s”, the decision was made that the quantity of whales was the best yet witnessed by Laura and Fede, and the opportunity to conduct the first stage of whale research was too great to pass up. We prepared the krill powder and launched the drone, and begun releasing the powder. We observed the whales’ movement and behavior for the following 20 minutes before concluding the experiment and returning the precious drone back onboard safely. We’re pretty much all whale scientists now. Saving the world one whale at a time.
We returned indoors with sore cheeks while we defrosted our fingers. We soon realized our ETA was a little blown out… ETA 7pm. Whales are so distracting when you have somewhere you need to be! Within an hour of motoring, the call came again – so many whales we could hardly pass through safely – and we all returned to the bow to watch whales dwarf the yacht as they cruised around us within meters. We were all convinced the first encounter was the best experience anyone could possibly have with whales – yet whales on the second encounter came closer, groaned louder, and displayed their flukes more often.
After 40 minutes, Captain Fede made the difficult decision to continue on despite the playfulness of the whale pod – unfortunately Antarctica isn’t always a calm playground, and we needed to anchor before midnight… We motored on with our whale expectations truly exceeded and reached Trinity Island around 8.30pm.
We deployed the zodiac and explored the 5 potential anchorages in the area – a process involving 2-3 people entering the anchorage on a zodiac, conducting manual depth readings (10m rope attached to a lead weight), and visual inspection of shallow areas and strong points from which to run shore lines. Bertrand operated the handheld radio for communication to Ocean Tramp, Miguel intermittently checked the depth, and I drove the zodiac.
It turns out Fede is a fussy and extraordinarily safe captain, and refused to anchor in any of the 5 anchorages we inspected. We approached the sixth and final anchorage on Trinity Island – and SUCCESS! A lovely sand bottom with a gradual decline into deep water – we finally had the captain’s approval! We thoroughly inspected the area with the zodiac for shallow patches and found none, but were happy for the opportunity to get close up to Weddell seals, Gentoo penguins, and chinstrap penguins. We returned to Ocean Tramp happy to get warm and eat ourselves into a food coma – there’s no words to explain the feeling of returning to a warm, delicious spaghetti after a few hours zooming around Antarctica in a zodiac.
I can confidently say that last week has been one of the best in my life, and the constant happiness I feel in my heart is utterly overwhelming. Can one person be too happy? I may just explode. Please, please keep responding to blog posts – reading the responses are such an awesome part of our evening. We all love hearing from you!!! Merry Christmas from the Tasmanian!
