Imagine Winter Here?
Ocean Tramp – Lori
Hey, thanks to family and friends for following along! We’ve gotten all the messages. (So glad to hear about the 90th birthday party plans for my mom next week!!)
To Jeff Carter, who wanted to know how the blog works: I am one of the photographers (Lori) on this specific trip, which was put together by Visionary Wild photo workshops, working with Quixote Expeditions. Quixote invites guests on board to write up blog posts. Writing is one of my core skills, and since I always keep a journal of every trip I make, this wasn’t a hardship to do.
Today we have the routine Antarctic weather – grey, drizzly and damn cold! We spent the morning on Peterman Island, a few more penguins (!) and some fur seals. Penguin guano gets very slippery when it is wet. That’s all I’m
gonna say; you can figure out the results of that on your own. A thorough cleaning for all of us on return.
Peterman is our furthest south position, before we start heading back north. I’ll look up more about this place when I get home. There was an explorer, Charcot, who overwintered in this location. Truly, if today was a typical “summer” day, I can barely fathom what winter could be like. Finally broke down and opened one of the handwarmers today, just that cold.
After lunch we toured the Lemaire Channel, a.k.a. Kodak Avenue for it´s spectacular scenes..followed by the iceberg “graveyard” near Pleanau island. Because of the currents and depth, some icebergs end up here and can’t get back out; eventually they melt and return to water. It’s pretty amazing to see so many ‘bergs, all congregated together. And a couple of seals posing graciously on a bergy bit for us! The Lemaire is a popular cruise ship destination, so we saw a number of Zodiacs zipping around too. Gives you a sense of scale when you see one pass by an iceberg. Given how nimble we can be on a sailboat, we had the great fortune to be able to stay on the boat to photograph all this. Spectacular steering amongst the icebergs by Niall and Caesar today. Unbelievable.
All our crew is great; so interesting to get to chat with them throughout the day, up at the helm, or down in the saloon. It is fascinating to discover how varied are the interests of our crew, and how complex is their combined knowledge base. On a boat of this size, everyone has to be able to do pretty much anything. Unlike the staff on a cruise ship, these people are very much part of our experience. We eat together often, we share stories. Certainly, we rely heavily on their extensive knowledge each time we come ashore on a different island.
Life on a sailboat is genderless and everyone shares in the various responsibilities. When lines are needed to be pulled, everyone is on deck. When food is required, the cooking (here at least) is shared by Niall and Lucy (and both of them are excellent cooks!!!) BTW, if you’re reading because you’re thinking of booking with Quixote in the future, don’t worry about bringing along your own food, you won’t need it. We are kept watered and fed VERY well, complete with home baked chocolate chip cookies and breads, and snack time before dinner!
A little intro to our fascinating crew (two today, two tomorrow!)
First, our Captain Damian Foxall is a professional mariner; he’s been at sea his whole life. He is pretty much Ireland’s top offshore racing sailor. He has been sailing around the world 10 or 11 times; so much so, that he’ll tell you his mileage is “to the moon and back”! And, always making the Canadian connection (yup, I’m the Canadian on board), Damian lived in Quebec for some time, as the manager for sports and wildlife for the Canadian Wildlife Foundation, a programme that uses sports to connect youth to wildlife. He is also the first sustainability manager for a sailing team in the Volvo Ocean Race. He can geek out on photographic equipment with the best of us (he’s got a good eye), and still tell you the name of every piece of mechanical equipment on this boat.
His partner is Lucy Hunt, who is also on board with us. In her land life, Lucy is a marine biologist; her special areas of interest are marine education and awareness, marine mammals, with a side order of plants. She is a well-respected environmental educator who has some fairly extensive credentials on her own. She grew up in her family’s restaurant biz (oh, man, can this girl bake bread!!!), but she is also an award winner for her environmental work and education programmes. She has produced a curriculum on Ocean Health and Sustainability for the Volvo Ocean Race. Whenever she gets to go on land with us, you will find her examining every piece of kelp, and happily engrossed in slime! (Both Lucy and Damian are from Kerry, while Niall is from Cork, so they can always be relied upon for a little healthy county competition!!)
More about Niall and Caesar tomorrow! Stay tuned…
