In a land of white magic we drift, spellbound in silent awe
On this morning of the 8th of January 2019 I open my eyes anchored off King George Island, Antarctica. The anticipation that led up to this moment is now transforming into an excited buzz on board, we are finally here. The sun shines down on us as we surface from a well-deserved sleep. There is no wind in the bay, as I walk out on to the aft deck a group of penguins swim up to the boat popping their curious heads up, finding this deep keeled intruder heavily suspect. Three glaciers in the bay, each one rumbling actively with the most guttural thunder, they drop small amounts of ice that float and move with the water. This island is where the main bases are located, we are here to wait for the guests’ flight to land at the American military base, where we will pick them up and start sailing south toward the peninsula. I am already in excited appreciation of the beauty around me and Ashley keep mentioning that this is the ‘armpit’ of Antarctica, a place for transits and shipments, the real magic starts further down the Gerlasch Straits. Today and tomorrow will be spent preparing the boat for an eight-day trip of discovery in the coldest continent on the planet.
10th January
0500hrs
We left our anchorage at King George Island yesterday evening and are on an overnight 150-mile stretch through Bransfield Straits toward the northern Gerlasch Straits. Last night we sailed passed a colossal iceberg, named A57A and measured at eleven nautical miles by five nautical miles, this tabular berg broke off the Wedell Sea pack ten years ago.
I have just come off my ice watch shift, handing over to Rory and making a rhumb line for the galley to turn on the kettle for my standby two-hour shift in the relative comfort of the inner cockpit.
Destination ploughs through the icy water, even the sound of the boat carving through water is alien here, it has a crispy tone. My thermometer reads -3 air temperature and 1 sea temperature, a keen reminder that two metres from where I’m standing is an instant icy death, amazing how quickly ones natural fear instinct kicks in; we would never even consider walking up to the foredeck without another person watching your every step, every move is calculated. The light never quite fades, a grey hue remains through the night, and there is so much to see here that I’m grateful for the otherwise jarring phenomenon. Great towering icebergs loom hazily in the distant snowy horizon. l will never tire of looking at them.
Every few minutes I spot a whale; Orca, Minky, Blue and Humpback, the warmth and laughter that builds up from each sighting thaws the snow off my shoulders. I have to sing and laugh a little into the white void to purge some of the disbelief that I’m here, it feels good. Snow falls slowly on to the deck, with each puff of wind the snow cuts at my eyes which are ever-vigilant looking forward, our snow goggles are tinted against the sun so they are debilitating in this twilight visibility and cannot be worn. The risk of hitting an iceberg is very real and could sink us in minutes, hence the twenty four hour outside watch.
How did those men do it? How did they survive in the harsh winter of the Antarctic with such little resources available to them? It takes us half an hour before our watch to get our gear on. Thermal layers, hand and foot warmers, fleece layer, windbreaker salopettes and smock, fleece balaclava, snow goggles and thermal gloves. All that equipment and for the two hours that I am standing outside on the lookout my fingers and toes felt as though they could fall off at any moment and I had to dance for the majority of my shift just to keep from freezing solid. Not to mention my layer of comfort blubber to help with heat generation. Were they supermen? Certainly a different breed of man, we would all like to think that we would survive once the instinct kicks in and there is no other option, but being here gives some more context to the speculation. I suppose therein lies the reason that their stories have shaped our relationship with this continent, Antarctic Warriors skilfully condenses a lot of these great endeavours, for anyone that is interested in reading the book.
Once we arrive at Deception island we will launch the tender and attempt shore expedition, hopefully this snow clears up.
1800hrs
Our attempt at a shore expedition this morning on Deception Island was thwarted by the quantity of ice at the anchorage of Portal Point and a fifty-knot weather system coming down from the North, every part of our passage plan is subject to change in this volatile environment. If the ice thickens enough it can damage the hull of the boat even just at the rate of drift. So we carried on South to try and cover more ground toward the peninsula. Most of the afternoon was spent in our own slice of heaven, Graham Passage, discovered in 1922 and named after the founding whaling vessel, quite a feat considering how well camouflaged the entrance is. I was steering us into what seemed like the our icy demise at the hands of the snowy mountains dead ahead, but Ashley assured me that the opening to the pass at the foot of the mountains will soon show itself. There is an interesting illusion that all this white rocky grandeur brings to our human eyes in this part of the world; everything looks so much closer than it actually is. This is mostly due to the sheer expanse of the white peaks, the land consists only of mountain peaks and each one is its own respective giant and they are all covered in snow and glacial ice down to the water, making it difficult to judge ones proximity by sea. Nevertheless the narrow entrance to this fjord appears like something straight out of Lord of the Rings. We have no more than five hundred metres of clearance either side of us, heavily compacted glaciers tumble down to the sea. An iceberg lookout on the bow relays information to the cockpit and guides our slow entry. Everything is glowing with that impressive glacial blue tint. Once in the fjord with Bluff Island on our starboard quarter we come to a stop and turn off the engine and generators, the sun pushes through the clouds to shine on this picture perfect moment.
Four active glaciers surround us, ice flows through the whole channel and the pass is full of interesting iceberg shapes. Every five minutes a rumbling crack comes from the glaciers. My literary skills fall flat of being able to describe what this sound is like. The terrifying boom of the glaciers in a constant anguish of contortion and compression shoots excitement through every bone in your body, it is such an unnerving sound that makes one feel most vulnerable. It touches on the sensation of ultimate powerlessness beneath these behemoth ice cliffs, a sensation that we are averse to discovering within ourselves being the fragile creatures that we are, something that throws our coveted physical control to the wind. This is the power of the ice, true forces of nature, thousands of years of movement that spans what feels like an eternity in this white desert. We were spoiled with a show of a few glacier cliff faces breaking off and tumbling into the water and some icebergs breaking apart and rolling upside down. An Attenborough-esque scene unfolded in the way of a Crabeater seal lazily sunbathing on a large iceberg in the fjord, he waved almost intentionally to close off a dreamy nature matinee show in style as we start up the engine and slowly push through the ice. We now sail on with the sun at our backs to our anchorage for the night, a place called Enterprise Bay.
11th January
Enterprise Bay, named after Enterprise whaling, is home to a half-submerged shipwreck, the ill-fated Governer. She was driven aground nine days after Shackleton’s epic journey of survival began at the inception of the Endurance icing over in the Wedell Sea. Originally a cattle carrier with a length of 110 foot, she was converted to a whale and carried eight-five crew members and 22,000 gallons of whale oil, a raucous party below the decks of the steel Norwegian build followed the whaling bonanza that earned them all that oil. An unfortunate rum-fuelled mistake set fire to ship and the flammable whale oil burned something fierce. The smoke, acting as a massive flair, attracted the attention of other whalers and they got rescued mere hours after the Captain grounded her. Our anchorage at Enterprise was calm and comfortable, I was under the impression that the wind blew hard even in the summer but the water is like a sheet of glass every night. It is the changeable aspect of the weather that makes navigating through this part of the world quite challenging, however this time of year is sunny and calm, perfect conditions for the adventurers that make their way down here to enjoy the magic of this place.
Ashley creates all our routes and has a passage plan laid out for the whole week. Every move you make in Antarctica has to be detailed in a permit document that is sent in to your applying treaty country’s Antarctic liaison, a minimum of three months before coming down here. We will try to stick to the scheduled landings as much as we can but it is always subject to weather. After navigating through Plata Passage, visited by about twenty Humpback whales we made for Whilehelmina bay to make our first landing on the peninsula. I drove the guests ashore to a landing that had three Wedell seals sunbathing lazily under an ice cliff. Destination had to stop quite a way off the land as there was heavy packing of ice so to get to the landing I had to navigate a path around bergs and packed slush. One must identify whether the ice ahead is sea ice, black ice or glacier ice before pushing through it as they have different densities, a fantastic learning experience. After dropping Ashley off for her to make some steps in the snow, I returned for the guests, after we got back to Ashley I set foot on the peninsula of Antarctica for the first time. We approached the seals at a safe distance not to bother them, particularly photogenic one gave me an exasperated sigh as I took a shot of her, she probably wonders what the big deal is.. ‘I’m just lying here, guy’. After a few snaps we quickly returned to the tender, we hadn’t walked further than two metres from it as the ground was giving way beneath us. Once back to the boat we continued on our way toward Paradise bay, making a quick stop at the Cuverville penguin colony, home to six thousand Gentu penguins.
12th January
0500hrs
We pushed on through the Errera Straits to get to Paradise Bay where we are anchored now and where I type this despatch on anchor watch. We lie two hundred metres from Waterboat Point, a Chilean base founded in the 1950s. Scientists Bagshaw and Leicester lived here under a water boat in the 1920s studying the local penguin colony.
The anchorage is staggeringly beautiful, glassy water reflects the snowy mountains off it without a single blemish. The only thing breaking the perfect surface tension is a family of humpback whales at the other end of the anchorage, about a kilometre away. The bay is full of little icebergs of all shapes and sizes which drift slowly through the bay. Ashley had warned us that this bay can have up to five knots of current which poses a massive threat to sailing boats in these parts; icebergs range from the size of a car to that of a house, being on anchor watch means anticipating the approach of a berg and taking measures to fend it off with a fender if small enough, using the thrusters to try and change its course, and if it is big enough to warrant it, up anchor. There are some that are far too big to stop.
As I sat outside with all my layers protecting me from the well below freezing temperature, I spent an hour of pure bliss listening to and filming the family of humpbacks who now ventured no more than two hundred metres from the boat. We have seen close to thirty humpback whales by now, but tonight we share a bay with them. Everyone sleeps on while I enjoy this moment with three whales, they are having something to eat and just rolling around playing. Their giant fins flop as they roll and tails shoot up as they dive for krill. Since it was only two in the morning, they are subdued in their movement; each breath they come up for is slow and drawn out. Once in every five breaths is paired with a dulcet sigh, a vibration that sounds like a sustained bass note on my cello. They are right in front of me, and I have this moment all to myself. I look around to take in the surroundings, nature is my god and I am blessed.
1500hrs
While departing our little slice of heaven found in Paradise Bay we came across an ominous looking Leopard seal perched on an ice floe. These guys are at the top of their game in the seal world, very dangerous to humans in the water and known to pop zodiacs in these parts if owners get careless. Their features are almost dog-like with a vicious grin that smiles to expose a row of razor-sharp teeth. Their shoulders protrude to give them a hunched look. This particular giant seal gave us a flash of his toothy weapons to warn us not to get any closer to his patch of ice and we duly reversed away.
Now under way toward Port Lockroy, we have an open patch of the Gerlasch to cross while on the way to break some ice through Neumair Channel. An hour ago, Ish and I were standing together in the aft cockpit appreciating our magnificent surroundings while steering around some bergs. On our port side lay a huge iceberg that was coming apart about two kilometres from the boat, we have already developed a keen sense for what pieces of ice are on the brink of collapsing. We heard the telling cracks and rumbles and kept our eyes glued to this particular mammoth berg, sure enough a massive chunk of ice cliff came crashing off the corner into the water with an almighty thunder clap, leaving a mini tsunami and ice cloud in its path. There it is again, that feeling of powerlessness, of submission to the greatness of nature. Unbelievable.