December 31, 2022June 26, 2023

Sea Days

This post is part of our epic adventure to the Falklands, South Georgia, and Antarctica. In case you don’t want to read this sequentially, or you are looking for a specific part of the trip, here are some shortcuts:

At Sea – December 31st and January 1st

52°54’9″ S, 047°17’2″ W

With two sea days in our immediate future, we decided to take some preemptive sea sickness medicine. We had a leisurely breakfast, watched the Sydney NYE fireworks at 11am, and then took a nap. The seasickness medicine made us complete zombies, but at least we weren’t barfing.

We had two tasks for the day: clean all of our equipment in preparation for the biosecurity inspection in South Georgia, and get fitted for dry suits.

For the biosecurity check, we took anything that was going ashore (clothing, backpacks, tripods, etc.) to the lecture theatre and used vacuums, brushes, and even tweezers to remove every grain of seeds, sand, and dirt. This included using a magnifying glass to check velcro, mesh, and pockets. We then went down to the mudroom to inspect and clean our muckboots.

For the drysuit fitting, Patrick first demonstrated how to put on a drysuit, and made it look a lot easier than it felt. You basically wear everything you wear ashore (minus the outer shell jacket and pants) under the dry suit. Getting the bottom half on is pretty easy – the suit has built in feet so you just step in with your thick socks on and use the suspenders to hold it up. You then put on 7mm booties over the dry suit. The next part is where it gets tricky. You first spray your wrists with baby shampoo and wriggle them into the sleeve seals. Then you spray the neck seal with baby shampoo and wriggle your head through. THEN, you put on a 7mm hood and tuck that into the neck of the dry suit. Lastly, you put on the lobster claw 7mm gloves (which I found impossible to do myself). I was not looking forward to the dry suit experience, but was relieved when it wasn’t as constricting as I imagined.

There were several lectures in the afternoon: one from Ade about how to identify different birds based on body type and flight details, and another from Adrian with some simple photography tips. In the daily recap, Patrick shared the science behind why it is so windy. We also learned that we needed to keep the blinds closed and windows and doors would be covered at night to avoid bird strikes. Progress wise, we were about a day behind in the voyage due to headwinds.

It was New Year’s Eve, so there was bar trivia in the lecture theatre after dinner. There was no way we were staying up until midnight, but we did wake up for the countdown and honking of the ship’s horn. Obligatory yule log dessert photo:

New Year’s Day was a blur, not related to New Year’s Eve, but instead because we were in the middle of the Scotia Sea and sedated by seasickness medicine. Andy managed some bird photography from the upper deck and saw skuas and brown-browed albatrossed.