The plan for Friday morning was to stay in the area of Lemaire/Palmer for our final two landings of this trip, one at Neko Harbour and the second at Paradise Bay. We were to be the second group out, meaning we didn't have to get up early, but promptly at 7:30 our Expedition Leader came on the PA extolling "another beautiful Antarctic day and great conditions for a landing". Looking out between the drapes all we saw was snow falling! We're not sure what this guy would say if we ever actually GOT a beautiful, sunny day! One thing he did point out was this was a landing "on the continent" (as opposed to one of the islands) and congratulating anyone who now "had" all seven continents. Realizing that this would, in fact, be our seventh continent landing quickly dispelled any thoughts of rolling over and going back to sleep!! When we hit the beach about 10:15, we jumped up and down a couple of times and said, "okay we can go back now"! Actually we did hike the snow trails half way up the hill, took a few pictures, watched some of the crazy people "sled" down from the top, and THEN headed back to the ship.
As we had lunch, the ship moved out for our next, and final, stop at Paradise Bay. Along the way we sailed out into open water and were pelted by high winds and heavy seas. We didn't know it then, but this was a portent of later events! The staff had been in touch with another ship in Paradise who told them the bay was clear, but the vagaries of weather being what they are down here, by the time we got there the wind had blown the bay full of floating ice, so the last landing became a zodiac ride. As Larry has been fighting a bad throat and a bit of laryngitis all week, he took a pass on this one, but Monica got some great pictures. And a glass of champagne along the way!
As we were leaving Paradise Bay to start the journey home, the Captain came on with a brief description of the plan and announced that we should definitely "Drake proof" our cabins before dinner. Later, at the evening recap, he gave a weather briefing, complete with charts, showing expected winds of 50+ knots out of the west (our side of the ship by the way) and seas of 15 – 30 feet starting at about 9:00PM! To back all that up, when we entered the Dining Room on Deck 2 ALL of the port (left) side windows (again, OUR side of the ship!) had their weather shields in place and the blinds drawn. We had seen this on the Discovery Channel Mighty Ships episode about this ship. When heavy weather is expected they place steel hatches inside all of the lower deck windows to guard against the waves "blowing out" the glass. Not a comforting thought! We sat on the other side of the Dining Room! We will say the Captain knows his weather, because at almost 9:00 PM, on the dot, the ship started to pitch and roll!!
By the time we finished dinner the ship was pitching left, right, up and down with no sense of rhyme or reason. So what did a bunch of us do?? We made our way, holding tight to anything that was attached to a wall, to the Observation Lounge at the front of Deck 6 to watch the show. And what a show it was, with the bow moving up, down and around through an arc of at least 30 degrees in every direction, water and spray flying over the bow and the occasional wave hitting the windows! A couple of the staff popped in for a visit and told us the bridge registered a peak wind gust of 73 knots, or 105 MPH!!!! A few pictures……
About 11:00 PM we headed back to our cabin, where we discovered it wasn't QUITE "Drake proofed" enough!! Once we got everything else either packed away or otherwise nailed down, we crawled, quite literally, into bed and hung on for dear life!! Neither of us slept that much or that well for the not unreasonable fear we might wake up on the floor!!!
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