Boarding

We’re delivering the luggage early in the morning and have a few hours for some last-minute shopping. The boarding of the boat is from 16:00 and we’ll join the rest of the group at the harbour. Funnily enough our boat is one of the smallest that has been at the dock in the last few days. Apparently it arrived earlier in the morning and is scheduled to set out at about 19:00.

Antarctica Ortelius
Antarctica Ortelius

The crew welcomes us aboard, and we immediately start of with a safety-training for when the ship is going down. Quite funny to find an escape route if you have no idea what way is up, down port or starboard on the ship. We managed and while listening to some more trainings we set out to the Drake Passage.

Traveling through the Drake Passage

The Drake Passage is the open ocean between the bottom of the South-American continent and Antarctica. This area is also where the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Ocean meet. This makes the area quite volatile and has potential for waves of over 10 meters high. Most people got an anti-sea-sickness patch that should prevent the worst sea-sickness. Still almost half of the passengers got sick. Luckily I got through it without issue and really enjoyed the time sailing through the passage. The sea was a bit rowdy with waves of 4 meter high but but the sea was beautiful and there were plenty of Albatrosses that joined us. What is fun is taking a shower with the ship going in all directions. You have to hold on while the water is going everywhere. We learned from the captain that the ship was swinging side to side by only 15 degrees while the ship should easily handle 25 degrees.

Safety briefings and checkup

During our trip through the Drake Passage we had lots of time to prepare for our visit to Antarctica. This meant we had mandatory safety-briefings for both our visit itself and the activities we were about to undertake. We already had our emergency evacuation training before the ship left the port. But other briefings included:

  • General information about the rules for visiting a protected nature preservation like Antarctica.
  • How to safely handle the cold and stay warm.
  • Briefings for our activities we were about to undertake. More on those later.

Since Antarctica is a nature preservation area there are very strict international rules about how to behave when visiting. One of the most important points is that we, as visitors, should have no impact on the environment. This means that we should leave everything behind just as we had first encountered it; and leave nothing behind. Of course this meant no trash, but also no bodily waste (no urinating on Antarctica lands, so no yellow snow funnily enough). Everything that you wanted to take ashore like bags, coats, etc. had to be checked for loose components or small crumbs and dust that could fall out.

First Icebergs

After two days of sailing we meet the first iceberg. It’s a great moment and signals our arrival on Antarctica is near.

First Iceberg
First Iceberg

Still one night of sailing left.