Subject: Day 14, March 4 – Another Day at Sea

Greetings,

     We were rocking and rolling last night as the ship is repositioning through the Scotia Sea to South Georgia Islands. We were experiencing 13 foot seas all evening and still are. I am glad we now have our sea legs. There were quite a few people missing at breakfast this morning. We have a following sea, which means the sea is pushing us; it would be a lot worse if we were going directly into it. However, the ship is still rocking 25 – 30 degrees from side to side. Nobody slept very well last night because we kept moving up and down and from end to end in our beds. Today is a day of lectures including a talk by a direct descendent of Shackleton, one of the very early English explorers of Antarctica. We were told a unique story yesterday by someone who visited the Russian Base Camp in Antarctica. The Russians are boring into the ice to calculate the age of the various layers and are taking some of the 4 million year old ice to pour their vodka over. I wonder what it would do for a Martini.  

            This morning we are doing the first of six Zodiac landings on South Georgia. There is a colony of King Penguins that exceeds 100,000 on the island so taking photos should not be a problem. Everyone on the ship should have their own penguin to follow around and photograph.

More to follow,

Tom & Holly