Day 6 Friday 19th February – A British Outpost

Day 6 – Friday February 19^th – Neko Harbour and Port Lockroy

Starting to learn that what you might think is going to happen the next day may or may not happen!! – or it could be completely different, met the Captain last night and it is clear that they try to maximize the day based on conditions, weather, tide etc.

As I mentioned was the Captain’s dinner table last night (just thought I would slip that in again!!) all very nice but as this finished they advised that were going to go into a small bay, which was an old whaling station. It was blowing a gale with sleet and rain, but they go so close with the ship that you could see so much detail but wow was it cold on deck! So to the next day..

We were advised if conditions were good we may get a call this morning about 4.00AM to look at some of the scenery on our travels to our location this morning …but apparently the weather when from sleet to rain to snow, winds blowing and then fog so it did not happen

But we did arrive at this bay at Neko Harbour this morning and went ashore – incredible glaciers – there are a lot of those here, plus many Gentoo Penguin’s (hope you are impressed) Skuas and Kelp Gulls. Only several minuets to get ashore from the Orion, surrounded by a bay of magnificent scenery, mountains and snow and it was zero degrees C and actually with the layers one was wearing too hot would you believe? Neko was named after a whale factory ship that operated from 1911.

We then left there sailing across the Gerlache Strait (I tell you all this as I know you all have a map of Antarctica on your walls and you are tracking my intrepid journey!) heading to Port Lockroy used to be an anchorage for whalers and established as Base A by the British in 1944 as part of a wartime initiative to monitor German shipping movements it even has a gift shop and post office today but was a civilian station until 1964. When I initially read about this it was not real on my “must do list” after all I had not come to Antarctica to go to a gift shop! However it was more fascinating than I imagined, as it was a museum as well as a little gift shop. The whole place including the little island it was on were tiny. The museum was essentially the renovated base as it contained items from the time– even saw telecommunication equipment that my Dad had shown me when I was a little boy …this was better than I expected and of course lots of penguins!!

Another exciting day, I know I keep saying this – but truly sensational scenery – hope the few pictures help provide some insight on what it looks like along with the scale. Be thankful that my ramblings do not carry the smell of Penguin.

At 18.00 tonight had the briefing which was a tad alarming there is a huge storm looming. So as I mentioned before the team on the boat plan daily – so anchor overnight here, normally we travel over night. They plan to beat the weather, which could involve 8-10 meter seas, and sail south in the morning meaning we could get very very south. Most people on the ship got very excited at this point as this does not normally happen that you get that far south apparently so I tried to appear knowledgeable too and got excited. So the plan as I write is Flanders Bay, Lemaire Channel and Penola Strait.

Note I estimate a loss in blog, as the satellite connection gets weaker to non-existent that far south I am informed (yep! we have a satellite expert on board mmm very interesting!) so lets see!!!….. “Ware of Antarctica” signing off