Hopes of landing at Cape Horn were dashed when we woke on the morning of 2 March. The weather had turned bad so there was no chance of making it ashore safely.
This meant, however, that we were crossing Drake Passage early and would have at least half a day extra in Antarctica.
I woke at 4am to the rolling and swaying of the boat. The tink-tink-tink of the carabinas on the metal water bottles was particularly annoying, and the motion of the boat meant I couldn’t sleep on my side for long.
I think I eventually fell back to sleep, only to be woken up at 8am by the captain’s announcement that we had entered Drake Passage.
Glen had put on a scopolamine patch the night before and was feeling fine enough to go for breakfast. I hadn’t put one on but was hungry and desperate for food.
Throughout the day whenever I felt nauseated it turned out to just be hunger so that was a good excuse to eat.
Breakfast was a much more subdued affair as fewer people made it out for food. People had rolled out of bed during the night; their personal items flew about the cabin.
I went to a Science Boat briefing at 10:15 where we found out about the two citizen science programs Hurtigruten participates in.
One is a water quality survey and the other is a secchi disk survey measuring plankton. After the briefing we could sign up.
There have been a LOT of briefings on the ship.
We went to the gym soon after — great preparation for lunch.
The ship continued to rock and roll throughout the day. Glen and I went to lunch (another buffet) which was very scantily attended.
We sat towards the back of the ship and watched the big waves comes and go. Every now and then the ship would slam down hard, and during one particularly bad roll plates, glasses, jugs, and people went flying with a crash. Epic!
(Despite Drake Passage’s reputation as being the Drake Shake, I didn’t think it was particularly rough, even with seas of 5m. It does get worse though. One of the staff said our crossing was pretty bad, but even so it wasn’t as bad as I expected. More like Drake Lake.)
I went up on deck, rugged up in my Faroe Islands beanie, to take photos of Giant Petrals that were following the boat.
The wildlife viewing has been pretty interesting. No super close-ups with whales yet but we’ve seen them in the distance. (We’ve seen the spray from their blowholes.)
And yesterday we saw a couple of Magellanic Penguins in Beagle Channel.
Glen and I booked in for massages (him at 1 and me at 3) as there was announcement at lunch that they were offering a 10% discounted if booked before 4.
I went for a second lunch at the “fast food” type restaurant and sat with some other people from the conference, before going off to my massage.
Look, it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great. Fifty minutes later I went to the sauna for about five minutes before thinking that perhaps dehydrating myself while the sea was rough was probably not a good idea.
I then went outside to get into the jacuzzi (they were still open) but perhaps due to all the frothing of the water the heat had dissipated and it was too cold to be pleasant. I went back inside.
We signed up for the clay modelling and classic navigation workshops then went to the photography tips and tricks lecture.
Though I’ve done a few photography workshops and taken a lot of photos it was worthwhile to have a refresher and to adjust for shooting in different conditions (i.e. snow).
The photographer was also very down on selfies (fair enough) but considering most of the people on board aren’t going to take great animal/landscape photos (definitely not better than professionals) and often the most engaging photos from people’s holidays are of them enjoying said holiday, perhaps it would also be good to mention what makes a good people shot too.
Inspired, however, I went up to deck 10, edited the photos I’d taken over the past few days and chatted to Michael and Liz while the seas roiled outside the window. I could look out at that view forever, even though it’s just ocean and cloudy sky.
Dinner was a set menu again and we had the second seating at 8pm. Four courses (and I had two desserts) then we rolled off to bed.
Travels with Dan 
What do you say, eh?