Day 16: Drake Passage
(This is part of a series of re-posts from my trip to Antarctica in 2009)
I didn’t sleep particularly well last night. Mostly because Paul was snoring. I finally got up after a couple of hours and grabbed my emergency earplugs from my backpack. It was good to wake up and have breakfast though.
Last night when the Drake was rockin’. I went out on deck with Seth. He took photos, I took video of him taking photos. Standing on the bow of the ship in a tshirt and jeans while the wind is whipping and the waves are crashing is not a particularly smart thing to do. Lesson learned. I got a little wet, the camera was fine, and Seth got his shot .The video was kindof boring though.
Today is a light day. Just lectures and stuff. Damien talked about the history of land claims in Antarctica. JP and Steve did a summary of their photographic work (Seth and Jeff did theirs last night and they were incredible). I’ve started to pack my room and am mostly done. To pass the time I’m watching Lightroom re-read metadata after geocoding. Yawn.
Minky continues to make the rounds of the ship. This morning he visited the ship’s laundry and helped iron some clothes. He stopped by the crew’s game room for a little PlayStation action then swung by the crew mess to watch part of a safety video.
The Drake kicked us hard during the day. We all seem to have decent sea legs, and the rocking is now entertaining rather than nauseating. At lunch a huge roll of the ship sent all sorts of stuff crashing. Jeff (not Schewe, a different one) got a lap full of Coke and Sprite. Up on the 5th deck in the Panorama Lounge the rocking is incredible. We’re sortof corkscrewing our way across the Drake. Looking out the window you’ll see the ocean go from above all the windows to below the lowest deck then spin around and crash over the bow completely engulfing the Panorama windows. It’s very cool. Many of us have tried to take video but it just doesn’t seem to do it justice.
Tomorrow morning we get off the boat. It’s a 6am wakeup call and our checked luggage has to be in the hall by 6:15am. Then we get breakfast and get off the ship to hang out in Ushuaia until our flight to BA at 3:00pm.