The Beagle Channel

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WELL IT'S good morning from our final moments on the Drake Passage. There some land out there at the southern extreme of Argentina behind the sunrise. There's a lot of birds all hovering around the ship. It's very windy but I've never seen so many seabirds before. I'm out watching the sunrise this morning.

I'll come over to the other side of the ship here. We've got more birds out in the distance and through there we've got the Beagle Channel where we're going through today. We're quite a bit ahead of schedule again today because we had to take quite a fast pace to escape the big storm that is coming. Fotunately we have succeeded in staying ahead of it. There was quite a bit of a swell overnight but it has eased off a bit now.

Over there is some of the islands off the very bottom of South America. Cape Horn is way out there around those islands there. That may even be it. So it's farewell from the notorious Drake Passage which hasn't really been all that notorious for this trip. We're just about to take on a pilot which means we won't be able to go on the bridge anymore. The pilot will guide us through the channel. Every ship going through the channel has to have a pilot becuase it is very dangerous to navigate. Apparently it costs about five thousand US dollars every time they go through.

It's going to be a fairly slow trip expecting to arrive in Ushuaia sometime tonight. Normally we are scheduled to arrive in the small hours of tomorrow morning and we disembark during the day tomorrow but it looks like we are going to be arriving sometime tonight in the early evening nad staying on board overnight before going back onto shore tomorrow. So this is probably my final night at sea.

I'm going to do some photography now. We've got brilliant birds especially out the other side and a beautiful sunrise about to come up. I'll probably give you a few more updates during the day as we go through the channel and again when we arrive. OK over and out.

Well as you can see we are almost in Ushuaia now. We are less than five nautical miles away so we should be landing pretty soon. As I mentioned this morning we are quite a bit ahead of schedule. We were supposed to return here in the small hours of tomorrow morning. Anyone catching flights tomorrow they can rest assurred tonight that they will definitely get to the airport. It's getting very windy here, and further out it was getting quite stormy in the exposed water. Fortunately we are now in the calm of the Beagle Channel. Lucky we missed out on all the action out on the passage. So I'll be back soon.

After twelve days at sea we finally reach our destination back in Ushuaia. This is South America's largest offshore island so the next part of the adventure will begin from here soon. We do still have another night here because we arrived quite a bit ahead of schedule to escape the big storm brewing down south. It is reaching us up here now with quite a strong cold wind. I'm glad we're off the ocean now and almost at the wharf and almost finished.

Well you can see I've finally had a go on one of the grand pianos. Some of the keys actually stick so I won't be able to get very far with this. Just doing a few little chords. Anyway there's going to be a presentation downstairs shortly so I'd better head down for that. We're back in port and it's strange seeing all these lights all around us after so much time in isolation. We only ever saw two research ships and one yacht in the entire time out in our twelve days out in the ocean. It's quite a culture shock coming back to what was a very isolated city when I first came here about two weeks ago.

This isn't bad for a Kawai, but I do prefer a Steinway.