February 4, 1994

12:15am

We've passed midnight now (and we're supposed to push our clocks back an hour now, before bed), and it's never gotten dark outside. The land of the austral midnight sun...

8:00am

Antarctic weather truly is unpredictable. Yesterday evening, it was overcast but we had relatively good visibility, and the sea was quite calm. This morning around 1:30am, I woke up to a woman shrieking, which I determined quickly probably came from the Charleston Club down the hall, since there were a lot of people around and dance music playing. When I looked out the window to check the weather, everything was a deep royal blue hue, with fog limiting visibility to probably around a quarter mile or less. The sea was more active, with waves probably approaching ten feet.

I woke up many times during the rest of the night. I was a little afraid that we would find a huge iceberg or pack ice up ahead of us coming out of the fog, too close to avoid. (The fog is often a signal that the water is getting close to freezing.)

Now, the ship is really tossing again, reminiscent of the Drake Passage (but not that bad, I think). I took another Dramamine before showering, just in case. Getting cleaned up in the bathroom was quite a trick with the ship rolling around again. I don't remember it being so bad in the Drake Passage in that respect. Maybe I was having fun then and didn't notice the annoyance of it.

12:30pm

The captain just told us that we are currently at 67S, approx. 94W. We are moving at around 17knots and we have roughly 2,300 nautical miles to go to reach McMurdo Sound. Our expected data of arrival is still February 11th, which is right on schedule according to the itinerary, although we did miss Stonington, Adelaide, and Alexander Islands. I guess I was hoping that we might get to spend more time at McMurdo and have a better chance of landing there, since we would be arriving earlier than expected, but it looks like the bad weather will slow us down some.

There are swells coming in from two different directions, and the maximum peaks appear to be around 10 feet, according to the bridge. The temperature is roughly 46F.

2:00pm

Watermelon sculpture - a common sight at Raffles

Today we were treated to a New Orleans lunch at Raffles, the buffet dining room. For a while there, I almost forgot that we were cruising the Antarctic Seas and thought I was steaming up the Mississippi. They had lots of cajun dishes (fried chicken, swordfish, gumbo), and separate serving carts for cajun shrimp and crawfish and for pasta with cajun sauces. They also had the band playing New Orleans Jazz pieces, quite well in fact.

Chefs serving crawfish etouffe and tube pasta

Definitely a change from the bleaker outlook from the ship's decks, where it's still overcast and cold looking. The fog seems to have gone away for the most part, though. Probably because the sun is heating up the water temperature enough to avoid the freezing point.

7:15pm

Well, if today was any indication of things to come, it's going to be a boring week out here in the open sea. Especially if the waves keep up their tossing and tumbling. Something about the motion of the waves saps the energy out of me, making me lazy, uninterested... Maybe it's the Dramamine. In any case, I missed the lectures today because I couldn't stand sitting in the Ambassador Lounge all that time with the rocking sea, and I couldn't find enough to do elsewhere on the ship. I really don't find their activities interesting (card games, bingo, etc.).

I spent the afternoon reading Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, which I'm afraid I may actually finish before we get to the Ross Sea (I started it just before leaving home), playing games on my Powerbook (Solitaire, Risk, Spectre), and dozing off either staring out at the sea in a lounge or on my bed in the cabin. I did begin writing postcards to be sent from Scott Base, but I don't want to do more than a couple a day or else I'll have them all written days before I'm able to mail them.

Anyway, I need to find a good project to work on. I'd really rather not go back to SILS work, this being a vacation after all... I guess I'll have to get creative or fall back into the old pattern of work, work, work!

One good thing, though, is that the sun just came out finally from behind the clouds. It's very bright, and the sea is a lot calmer than before. It's still moving around a lot, but at least it's not vicious like before. Lots of blue sky again, white clouds, and a dark blue sea with very cold-looking whitecaps on it.

11:30pm

The sun really came out, after all. It's been bright for several hours now, and the sun has just finally fallen back into a cloud bank. But it's still clear overhead, and the sky is a powdery blue again, with pink and grey clouds on the horizon all around. We've seen some spectacular icebergs on the horizon lately, especially nice to look at with the sun shining directly on them, lighting them up brightly against the darker clouds. We seem to be avoiding them, since they only appear on the horizon. But they're all very large: I'd estimate that they're a least an eighth of a mile across, and a hundred feet tall (above the water line). They have slanted tops, sometimes facing towards us, sometimes away from us. I've taken a few pictures of these huge icebergs. Hope they turn out...

It's 11:30pm and the sun is still way above the horizon, through it's now behind some clouds. This is really amazing. It probably won't set until around 1:00am, then rise again around 1:30am. It will never get dark outside. It our curtains weren't so thick, I'd never be able to get to sleep. As it is, it's been harder lately.

I think I'm getting a sinus cold from the other passengers.

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