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South Shetland Islands

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13 March 2019

 

Sth Shetland Islands

Antarctica

 

58°S
63°W

Sea level

 

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WELL GOOD morning, we've now reached the South Shetland Islands. We had planned to land somewhere over there somewhere but it turns out that it's a little bit rough so we're going to head a bit further along the coast to see if we can find a good landing point. There's stunning scenery here and it's already starting to feel a little bit warmer thankfully. We don't know what is going to happen but we'll see if we can make landfall. If we can, we'll certainly go ashore. We were going to land around the point there, but as you can see the sea is very rough. It does seem to have calmed down a lot in just a kilometre or two. Let's see what happens.

OK we've spent the past few hours going along the coast and found one potential landing point here. The bay is fairly sheltered, so we're sending out a zodiac to see whether landing is possible. It is a bit rough out here still. Interestingly though this is the first time I've seen colour here from vegetation. Apart from the algae on the snow on some of the Antarctic bases, this is the first vegetation I've seen since leaving Ushuaia. The colour scheme has changed a bit.

The zodiac is on its way back now. Apparently they couldn't find a safe landing place on the beach. As you can see the swell is pretty horrendous anyway. It's very rough out there and very cold. Unfortunately it looks like we're not going to be able to land today, but we'll continue exploring around the islands. These are very interesting volcanic islands. It would have been good to have been close up to look at the vegetation, the first I've seen in a long time.

It's not safe to land, so we'll keep exploring the islands for a while, then start our journey back across the Drake Passage. Apparently there is quite a big storm coming up to the Drake Passage so we're going to head along fairly quickly to try to stay ahead of the worst of it. The centre of it has hurricane force winds so we want to keep in front of it and will leave as soon as we can. So in the mean time we'll continue to explore the South Shetland Islands without any landings.

Now the South Shetlands are going over the horizon and we can feel the swell with the big waves of the Drake Passage on our way back into South America. For the rest of the day we're going to have a bunch of presentations in the main lounge. It's very cold up here so I'm going to head back inside. So here's our last little view of the South Shetland Islands.

Well it's almost dinner time. As you can see it is very foggy out here. That's because the air is quite a lot warmer at around 5 or 6 degrees, quite warm compared to what it has been. So the warm air is sitting on top of the very cold water at probably around only one or two degrees. Later tonight we will be passing through the Antarctic convergence where the sea temperature will suddenly rise by a few degrees and we will be clearing the mist. That will happen at night. So anyway I need to head down and have dinner now and get back into the warmth of the cabin. There's a bit of a roll, but really not too stormy. We should still be able to keep north of the storm that is brewing to our east so that's looking good. Well that's it for another day and see you tomorrow.

 
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