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poletopoleShip's Position at 12:00:
The first of a series of days at sea. I am confronted by things undone.
The heavy schedule of interesting talks (first up at 09:00: Norm Lasca on ice formations) and meals is making it hard for me to get my own work done. Photo weeding, not to mention rating and sorting, is not urgent; but if I'd like to have the ship's professional photographer tell me what I'm doing wrong, I need to pick out some images for her to look at. I've been trying to read Rockwell Kent's Voyaging for a week now and gotten through maybe one short chapter a day. I have also many Antarctic books to read. There's another penguin drawing class this afternoon and I would like to do that, but I'm very behind on writing up notes about the trip too and I've also got some yarn that I should turn into something with either knitting needles or the crochet hook. There are also the usual maintenance things like washing the salt out of clothes and washing clothes in general.
I got the yarn to try to make a hat that won't slide forward over my eyes, but a hat with a strap to tighten its fit turned up in the ship's supply shop and that seems to be working. In the shop you can also get sweatshirts with penguins on them, down vests and jackets with penguins on them, polarfleece pullovers with penguins on them, and many other things with penguins on them, as well as handwarmers and long underwear without penguins. There are also children's backpacks and a knapsack in penguin shape, but they are not practical.
Someone said the other day that the catering staff are worried that the passengers aren't eating enough. The passengers feel exactly the opposite. After the first few days of the trip we've arrived at a standoff as the dining room staff offer course after course and passengers send back plates of half-uneaten food. I noticed last night that they seemed to be trying to throttle back a bit as the fish arrived with only one enormous pile (a normal serving) of fettucine instead of two. Most people don't take dessert although some of the desserts are irresistible (e.g. almond cake covered with chocolate). The head of catering is Austrian and the pastry chef excellent. The food is far better (less steam-table-y) than on the Fram, more formally served than on the Polar Pioneer. We have salad and fresh fruit at every meal. How long can salad last?
We have just passed 60 degrees — at 08:00 we are at 60 degrees 5 minutes South — and thus have passed from the blue ocean on my GPS to the yellow zone where apparently Garmin thought people just never went. This happened in the north also and makes the GPS much less interesting.
I go to the ice lecture, drop in for a few minutes on the photography talk (depressing; one cannot dedicate one's life to taking photographs), draw penguins in the afternoon, and learn a little more about how icebreakers work in the afternoon lecture. In between there are greater and lesser amounts of ice and water to look at under a low cloud cover. It's snowing lightly too, and the icebreaker is making its way through relatively open patches of water with very little apparent movement (rolling, for example). On the ice in the distance one sees penguins or seals, sometimes fleeing the monstrous icebreaker and sometimes ignoring it. We have seen emperor penguins already, all the way out here.
- 60°17.0' S 20°49.9' W
- Course 112°; Speed 11-15 kts
- Air temperature 2°C; Wind 12 kts Direction 320°
- Weather: Cloudy; Visibility 7
- Ice Cover: 8/10
- Distance covered past 24 hours: 296.2 nautical miles
The first of a series of days at sea. I am confronted by things undone.
The heavy schedule of interesting talks (first up at 09:00: Norm Lasca on ice formations) and meals is making it hard for me to get my own work done. Photo weeding, not to mention rating and sorting, is not urgent; but if I'd like to have the ship's professional photographer tell me what I'm doing wrong, I need to pick out some images for her to look at. I've been trying to read Rockwell Kent's Voyaging for a week now and gotten through maybe one short chapter a day. I have also many Antarctic books to read. There's another penguin drawing class this afternoon and I would like to do that, but I'm very behind on writing up notes about the trip too and I've also got some yarn that I should turn into something with either knitting needles or the crochet hook. There are also the usual maintenance things like washing the salt out of clothes and washing clothes in general.
I got the yarn to try to make a hat that won't slide forward over my eyes, but a hat with a strap to tighten its fit turned up in the ship's supply shop and that seems to be working. In the shop you can also get sweatshirts with penguins on them, down vests and jackets with penguins on them, polarfleece pullovers with penguins on them, and many other things with penguins on them, as well as handwarmers and long underwear without penguins. There are also children's backpacks and a knapsack in penguin shape, but they are not practical.
Someone said the other day that the catering staff are worried that the passengers aren't eating enough. The passengers feel exactly the opposite. After the first few days of the trip we've arrived at a standoff as the dining room staff offer course after course and passengers send back plates of half-uneaten food. I noticed last night that they seemed to be trying to throttle back a bit as the fish arrived with only one enormous pile (a normal serving) of fettucine instead of two. Most people don't take dessert although some of the desserts are irresistible (e.g. almond cake covered with chocolate). The head of catering is Austrian and the pastry chef excellent. The food is far better (less steam-table-y) than on the Fram, more formally served than on the Polar Pioneer. We have salad and fresh fruit at every meal. How long can salad last?
We have just passed 60 degrees — at 08:00 we are at 60 degrees 5 minutes South — and thus have passed from the blue ocean on my GPS to the yellow zone where apparently Garmin thought people just never went. This happened in the north also and makes the GPS much less interesting.
I go to the ice lecture, drop in for a few minutes on the photography talk (depressing; one cannot dedicate one's life to taking photographs), draw penguins in the afternoon, and learn a little more about how icebreakers work in the afternoon lecture. In between there are greater and lesser amounts of ice and water to look at under a low cloud cover. It's snowing lightly too, and the icebreaker is making its way through relatively open patches of water with very little apparent movement (rolling, for example). On the ice in the distance one sees penguins or seals, sometimes fleeing the monstrous icebreaker and sometimes ignoring it. We have seen emperor penguins already, all the way out here.
