Tuesday 8th March; 9th day at sea
A whole day at sea, and in the middle of a gale. The sea therefore was very rough for much of the day, and I spent a lot of the day lying down. Breakfast was a bit brief, but I got through lunch quite well, and even made a couple of trips up to the Observation Lounge. The first was in the morning after I’d been told that there was some chocolate cake left over from the previous afternoon, and the second was in the afternoon, after the snack had been delivered at 4 p.m. The snack is either cake or biscuits, and in complete contrast to the coffee, or the tea that you get if you don’t make it yourself, is very good. It’s always home made, and on the last afternoon before we got back to Ushuaia, we had what can only be described as “chocolate lump cookies”.
By the afternoon the weather was getting worse, and the wind speed had got to 25-30 metres per second and was gusting to 35 on occasion; i.e. about force 12. I skipped dinner on the grounds that it looked like asking for trouble – I was right as I heard that the contents of an entire table ended up on the floor after a very heavy swell, and that about half the expedition staff and perhaps a third of the passengers were sick. The hot news today is that we’re going to give the Governor of the Falkland Islands a lift back from South Georgia – I’m expecting a man in a Colonial Governor’s full dress uniform, including the plumed, chicken-like, hat, but I suppose I’ll be disappointed.
During the evening the wind got worse and we were now in a full-scale hurricane. The ship was moving rather a lot, and sleeping involved coping with your centre of gravity moving forwards and backwards on the bed, plus from side to side, and up and down, frequently at the same time. My watch has got a barometer, and I spent a lot of the night checking the air pressure to see if it had increased from the 974mb it had got down to - it didn't. Meanwhile above our heads there was a lot of crashing noises, and a rolling sound that was rather reminiscent of an oil drum on the loose. Almost the worst aspect was the monotony; I knew we would get to South Georgia around 3 or 4 a.m., and that would mean we would be in much more sheltered water, but time seemed to drag interminably.
By the afternoon the weather was getting worse, and the wind speed had got to 25-30 metres per second and was gusting to 35 on occasion; i.e. about force 12. I skipped dinner on the grounds that it looked like asking for trouble – I was right as I heard that the contents of an entire table ended up on the floor after a very heavy swell, and that about half the expedition staff and perhaps a third of the passengers were sick. The hot news today is that we’re going to give the Governor of the Falkland Islands a lift back from South Georgia – I’m expecting a man in a Colonial Governor’s full dress uniform, including the plumed, chicken-like, hat, but I suppose I’ll be disappointed.
During the evening the wind got worse and we were now in a full-scale hurricane. The ship was moving rather a lot, and sleeping involved coping with your centre of gravity moving forwards and backwards on the bed, plus from side to side, and up and down, frequently at the same time. My watch has got a barometer, and I spent a lot of the night checking the air pressure to see if it had increased from the 974mb it had got down to - it didn't. Meanwhile above our heads there was a lot of crashing noises, and a rolling sound that was rather reminiscent of an oil drum on the loose. Almost the worst aspect was the monotony; I knew we would get to South Georgia around 3 or 4 a.m., and that would mean we would be in much more sheltered water, but time seemed to drag interminably.
posted by Iain Burke at 30.1.06
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