Day 4 – Shake or Lake
It is the first day of our crossing of the Drake Lake. I noticed a few more Scopolamine patches on folks last night, heading into the Drake today. I also never knew there were so many varieties of penguin pajamas! Did folks already have them, or where they purchased just for this trip? I don’t really know…
Ponant was thoughtfully prepared for Drake Shake – these showed up on the stairway railings and in some of the hallways overnight, if needed.
We have lots of things on the program for today, so let’s get started.
The morning started with Early Bird bird watching, with a couple of the naturalist guides. The Drake is an excellent place for finding many different sea birds, and quite a few were spotted. The group gathered at the back of the ship, on the deck we’d be using to exit the ship during our activities.
Next up – a cruise overview and introduction to the expedition team. This was with both Captain Fab (Fabian Roche, who everyone called Captain Fab) and Expedition Leader John Frick. Our sailing was John’s 130th visit to Antarctica! John is both very experienced and very knowledgeable.
The Captain and John will work very closely together throughout our time in Antarctica, to determine where we can safely go and what we’ll be able to do once we get there – either landings or zodiac cruises. John and his team were absolutely wonderful throughout our cruise!! So hard working, to be sure we could do as much as possible during our time in Antarctica. The daily process will be –
--Before the evening briefing on the next day’s program, John & Captain Fab will determine what tomorrow will be. This is always with caveats, because circumstances can change overnight.
--After arriving at our first destination in the morning, the expedition team will offload the zodiacs and go check out the planned landing site – can we land, where is it safe to go, building steps in the ice & snow or paths as needed so we can more easily get up the hills, putting up the red flags which were our boundary markers of where to go and not go.
--Come back and start taking groups of people out, 10 to a zodiac, based on color groupings (more on those in a bit).
--Once everyone is finished with this activity, get everyone back on board, load up the zodiacs & equipment, and over lunch time cruise on to the afternoon location. A couple of times, our afternoon location was close enough that the team motored the zodiacs over.
--Repeat the morning activities of scoping out the landing site, making it safe, getting everyone over & back, and clean up & load up equipment and zodiacs at the end of the afternoon.
With each landing, they would also offload some survival boxes of food, blankets, etc, in the very remote chance a group cannot make it back to the ship due to an unexpected weather situation.
The expedition team was very busy every day! We could not have had this wonderful trip without them.
The color groupings – by dinner time yesterday, those in separate cabins who wanted to be sure to be together on landings needed to sign up at Reception. The Ponant team then divided everyone into four color groupings of approx. 40 per group – Green, Yellow, Blue, Red. Our activity times for the next seven days will be determined by our assigned color group. This was to help manage numbers, and also to be sure we kept below the IAATO (International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators) mandated limits of no more than 100 people on the continent at any one time. We’d alternate each day – ie day 1, yellow first then green in one group off the ship; blue & then red in the second group, for both morning and afternoon activities. Next Day, Blue & Red would go out first, followed by Yellow & Green. They posted the lists after dinner, so we’d be ready with our assigned color group starting today.
Next was Boots Camp, where we picked up our loaner waterproof boots. Following this was Parka distribution. While we were asked to provide a parka size to
AbD prior to the trip, that was only to give Ponant an idea of how many of each size might be needed. They had one of each size available to try on, so we could get the correct size.
After lunch, there was a Mandatory Expedition Briefing, if you wanted to go ashore, you had to attend. We had to show our room keys and sign in to confirm attendance.
There was an afternoon activity to decorate your Ponant water bottles with stickers, if you wished to do so.
For those who’d pre-booked the optional Kayaking, there was the first of a couple of briefings with the naturalists who’d be leading those outings.
Are you curious about how our Drake Crossing is going? Well, we have the Lake of all Lakes, more like a pond than a lake. This crossing has been so smooth all day, the ocean has been like glass the entire way thus far. Those patches were not really needed, and no one is complaining. The ocean that may look a little rough in some of the bird pictures above? That is engine wake as those were taken off the back of the ship.
Drake at 0730a.m.
Drake at 5PM
Drake at 8PM
In our evening briefing, John shares a wonderful surprise – because our crossing is going so smoothly and quickly (we will be across the drake in just a day & a half), we will be able to make our first landing tomorrow afternoon! Hooray – lots of cheers from the group! We are so excited about this news!!
After dinner, there was a PJ Parka party. As part of that, it was also Decorate your Parka time. Abd Guide Byron had spent a lot of time creating custom iron-on decals for our parkas. He had six designs to choose from; we could select & they had a couple of irons set up right there in the lounge to iron them on for us. Later on in the cruise, since he had extras, we could go back & get another if we wanted.
He also did custom AbD Guide Name Tag iron-ons for each of the guides, so they’d still look ‘official’ when their parkas were zipped up. So nice of him to do that for us!
Time to get to bed – we have a busy morning tomorrow to get ready for our first landing.
