A Leopard Seal - and A Continental Landing

I forgot to mention in yesterday's entry that our zodiac driver, Tom Murphy, was injured after we returned from zodiac cruising yesterday morning. Though we did not witness the incident, we learned that after all passengers had departed our zodiac, a second zodiac driven by Bruce Miller came up to the ship and offloaded its passengers as well. Then, because the seas were rough, the zodiacs were going back to the "new" landing site to pick up the participants who were still onshore, but needed two staff in each zodiac so that one could drive and the other could act as ballast. So Tom's zodiac was lifted to the 5^th deck to put it away for the day with the plan that Tom would ride with Bruce to pick up more participants. Tom was riding in the zodiac (as is typical) as it was being lifted by a crane – there are two attachment cables. Apparently one cable was slack and as a result, when a gust of wind came up, the zodiac was caught in the wind gust and the zodiac was turned essentially vertical. Tom grabbed the other cable and hung on desperately, but wrenched his shoulder and bruised his hand and neck in the process. Remember, Tom can't swim – not that I think it would matter much, because in these frigid waters, I don't think anyone would be able to move their body sufficiently to swim for much more than a minute. In addition, his drybag, the gasoline can, and the zodiac battery all went into the ocean next to Bruce's boat. Because the zodiac was essentially vertical, either the zodiac or a cable were swinging in the wind as well, which forced Bruce to lay down in his zodiac to avoid being struck as well. I'm not sure how they got Tom's zodiac back under control, but apparently they did. Bruce was able to recover the dry bag (which I believe had some of Tom's camera gear in it – he's a well-known photographer so we aren't talking cheap point and shoot equipment here) as well as the gas can, but not the battery. We understand that Tom is doing okay, he's sore but insists that he'll be driving again at Cierva Cove. So for reasons which go beyond just our desire to have good experiences and good photography, we are certainly hoping for improvements to the wind! It turned out Tom was on shore but not driving zodiacs.

We awoke this morning thinking we hadn't yet arrived in Cierva Cove, as the ship seemed to still be moving. But we were wrong – the ship had anchored, but the winds were still up above 20mph. So we pretty quickly decided to bail out of this landing site (we will have another opportunity to visit this site in a couple of days) and cruise down the Gerlache Strait to Cuverville Island. In the meantime, we attended a photography critique lecture. For this lecture, passengers could select images to submit to be critiqued anonymously by Tom Murphy and Rod Planck. It was really interesting to see and hear their takes on the images presented (though we didn't present any). Even for those images that I thought were really good, they identified things that could make them better – and there were some they thought were pretty good just as is.

After lunch, we donned all our gear and headed for the zodiacs to land on Cuverville Island. Once there, we waited for all passengers to get to shore so that we could go out in the first zodiac group. The seas were much calmer and Hugh Rose was our driver. We like Hugh because, as second in charge of the expedition, he's quite a pro when it comes to operational issues, he's an expert at driving the zodiacs, and he's a professional photographer, so we were able to ask photography questions during the ride.

Once on the zodiac, we quickly headed around the corner of the island as we spotted a sailboat which was anchoring nearby. Now, we realize many of you think we are nuts to come to Antarctica – but we're not crazy enough to do it on a sailboat!! They sailed through the Drake Passage from Ushuaia, the route we'll be taking as we make our way home in about a week. But to do it on a sailboat?? No way! It turned out they are skiers from France and they've been here a month. Their goal is to ski on various of the islands near the Antarctic Peninsula, which Ted Cheeseman said is fairly common to do. But it's not like there are ski lodges here, or ski lifts, or nice flat landing spots at the bottom of the slopes, so again, we think they are nuts!

After nosing around the sailboat, we were on the lookout for a leopard seal. And we found one! He was laying on a small iceberg, so we were able to get really close to him. He was sleeping for a while, then he woke up and raised his head, looked around and finally – the money shot! - he started yawning! This is exciting because the leopard seal has some pretty impressive teeth and a bright pink mouth. Yes, we got a bunch of pictures but won't have time to post tonight.

The ice formations that we saw near Cuverville were very impressive – lots of good sized icebergs of various shades of blue and blue-green and white. They are a lot of fun to see. After zodiacing for nearly two hours, we headed back to the landing site and wandered around the island for a bit. This is a gentoo penguin colony, but it's pretty small. So we finally headed back to the ship for dinner, as we knew we'd have yet another landing after dinner.

During dinner, the ship repositioned to Neko Harbor. Then we took the zodiacs to shore and landed – on the continent!! We realize that we've been on this trip for 3 full weeks now, but this is the first time we've actually set foot on the continent. And it turns out, this is the only landing that's actually a continental landing. Most of the landings in Antarctica are on the nearby smaller islands, where many of the penguin colonies are located. Many times, these islands are a very short distance from the continent, but we were pretty excited to actually land there today.

The Gerlache Strait and Neko Harbor, are simply gorgeous. There are towering mountains coming right up to the water's edge, and glaciers covering most of them. Yet at the landing site itself, there is a fair amount of land that is covered in rocks, not snow. Snow would be better because the rocks are covered in guano. It's reddish-brown and very pungent. Waterproof gear anyone??

We had been warned that the glacier comes all the way to the beach in one place, and that if it ever calves, it has been known to create a small "tsunami" where the water rushes away from the calving glacier. Then we heard a significant "boom" and were told that four out of five times, the movement was inside the glacier and nothing we'd see. So off we went to explore toward the end of the glacier, not taking this warning all that seriously.

Then it calved. There was a big boom and we looked up in time to see huge chunks coming off the front of the section we had been looking at, adding more ice to the water – and sure enough, sending a small wave – a tsunami, if you will – headed our way. We took a couple of photos and headed for higher ground. It was not a significant enough event to be dangerous to us, but it was easy to see how it could be! On our zodiac back to the ship later, Ted Cheeseman said he'd been giving the tsunami warning for 20 years and had never seen it happen...well, now he has.

This site is very calm, which bodes well for another landing here in the morning, as our landing this evening was pretty short. The glacier-covered mountains are reflected in the water of the channel and it's beautiful. Now if the low cloud cover would lift, it would be perfect.

After about an hour and a half on shore, we returned to the ship and have a 5:30am wake-up call so we can head back to this landing site, do some zodiac cruising in this harbor as well, and then head further south down the peninsula.