Chasing Icebergs!!

If anything, Sunday dawned with even calmer seas than we had on Saturday. The good news, of course, is that we finished our crossing of the Drake almost a half day sooner than planned, which left more time for……………whale watching!!


One of the great things about an expedition cruise is that, other than the day it has to be back at the dock, there is no set schedule, meaning the ship can take advantage of "what comes up". About 10:00 AM the Captain announced that the bridge had spotted "a pair of humpback whales" and that we would manoeuvre to get closer to them. So for the next hour and a half we "chased" the humpbacks around the southern end of the Drake. We did manage to get a couple of pictures, although our timing wasn't the greatest and the whales weren't too cooperative.

Saturday evening Larry Hobbs, the Expedition Leader, had told us that ice conditions looked promising enough that we might be able to get down into the Weddell Sea on the south-east side of the Peninsula. This is an area that is normally completely ice-blocked at this time of the year and can only be reached by sailing all the way around the tip of the Peninsula, a time-consuming process. Shortly after lunch, Larry announced that in fact the area was clear and we would proceed down the Antarctic Sound and then southward for our first "landing" on Monday morning. But first we would transit Iceberg Alley!!!

There are no words to describe just how big these bergs are, and unfortunately we didn't have anything to put in front to give them a measure of scale. Suffice it to say that Le Boreal was by far the smallest piece of floating real estate in the area. And also remember that, even though these icebergs have broken off of a flat-bottomed ice shelf that is the end of a glacier that has flowed out onto the sea, they still have about 80 percent of their total volume BELOW the surface of the water. It just may not stick out too far around the sides – so we didn't have to worry about any "Titanic moments".

Once we started into the area, the captain and our ice pilot found a nice route in between the bergs that gave us all a chance to see them "up close and personal". Here are a few photos – the video gives an even better idea of the size and number of bergs we saw.

Once we passed the majority of the icebergs, we slowed down as we progressed toward our Weddell Sea stop that the expedition staff hoped would be near Snow Hill Island.

We seem to have had one day after another of unexpected and fantastic sights so far. Let's see if it continues tomorrow.