A very icy Weddell Sea

Due to our late start into the Drake, and the slower crossing to avoid the worst of the waves, we only passed through the South Shetland Islands half way through the day we had expected to be our first full day of landings in Antarctica.  But here the seas calmed and we started to see some of the passengers that we 'lost' during the crossing.
With fine weather and only a gentle sailing motion, we took the opportunity to do a practice with the helicopters.  It seems a strange thing to do, but it is very hard to hear what is being said once the helicopter is going, and people do get hit by turning rotor blades, because they can't see them.  And that is in good conditions.  Mind you, I think that part of the reason is just to give us something else to do and get us anticipating the landings.

We sailed on to the Antarctic Sound, passing through to the colder eastern side of the peninsula and, at last, we made it into the Weddell Sea.

And we hit the ice - though not in the Titanic sense I am pleased to say.  We spent some hours pushing our way through the loose ice floes and up on the bridge, I could hear that the captain was getting concerned about how much ice we would find if ahead we were hitting it already.  We carried on through, watching the beautiful scenery around us, and wondering how far we would get.

It is hard to appreciate just how immense Antarctica is.  We are only on the tip of the peninsula, but on a continent that is twice the size of Australia, and when the peninsula is around 1500km long, that makes for a pretty big 'tip'.

After all, it had just taken us nearly three days to sail here and that was only 1000km.  And all we could see stretched ahead of ice was miles and miles of sea ice and ice bergs.  With a few seals and penguins thrown in of course.

When we were here last, we saw some impressive icebergs, but this is where the really big ice lives. The tabular icebergs are freshwater ice that breaks off the vast ice shelves and floats away. Many of the really big ones that we saw were some miles in the distance, locked into the sea ice.

But if you consider that the above water section of our ship Ortelius is about 18m high excluding the masts, then that may help with a perspective in some photos. Bear in mind that a typical height can be 75m, and then you can see from their shape that this makes them very long and wide. Of course 75m is only the visible part; there will easily be seven or eight times as much underneath.

So during the daytime hours, we were looking out onto great swathes of white, with just a few hints of blue. As the sun set at around ten, we were treated to some beautiful reds, oranges and pinks. Then after that, because this far south in the summer it doesn't get fully dark, we still had a lovely hazy, blue tinged landscape to look at.

At around 1am, with most passengers tucked up in bed, I was back up on the bridge watching our progress. The way these ships work is that they break the ice and push it away. That works all the while there is somewhere to push the ice to. But if the ice is solid for too large an expanse, then it has nowhere to go, so the ship can't get through. The ice we were at now was solid for miles ahead of us.

The captain moved the ship into the ice, cracking it up and forcing it along and behind us, but he soon reached a point where the ice had nowhere to go to, and we were in real danger of being trapped in the ice. He had no choice but to pull back into the more open waters.

We were still a long way out from our destination of Snow Hill Island, and so those few of us that were up knew that our plan to see the emperor penguin rookery was already looking decidedly dodgy.

In the morning, the expedition leader Delphine, the Captain and the helicopter crews spent some time discussing what options were open to us. They tried the ice again, but it was not going to be possible safely to get through.

The next step was a helicopter recce.  This showed that while there were a few pockets of open water which the ship would be able to navigate through, there was no way through or around this large expanse we were already at.  

The emperor penguin rookery was expected to be on the sea ice on the other side of Snow Hill Island, which was over thirty miles away from our current position.  This doesn't sound much but in Antarctica, where the weather can suddenly get very bad, very quickly, you just can't safely do a trip that far.  There would be too much risk of getting stuck too far away from the ship.

So our visit to the rookery was not going to be possible, and this far out, we had no idea whether we would get to see any emperors at all.  Clearly everyone was disappointed, especially a few people who had not realised that there was a genuine risk of not being able to get there, but we knew that the Captain and Delphine had not given up without an effort.  And they were soon telling us about some great alternative plans.

In the meantime, what we did have a lot of though, was the ice.  Our purpose in coming to the Weddell Sea was the emperors and the big ice.  We may not have been getting to the rookery, but we were certainly seeing the ice.

As with many occasions, our photos simply cannot capture the real beauty and magnificence, or the sheer size, of the real thing, but I hope that they at least give you an idea of just what an amazing place this is.

Oh, and we did get to see an emperor.  It was way off in the distance, but if you look carefully at my rather blurry zoomed in photo, you can just about make out the way the black markings drop at the side of the neck, and the little flash of yellow.

Weddell Sea update

So I said before that we were disappointed that our trip to Antarctica did not go into the Weddell Sea, and that whilst we did of course have some amazing experiences, we were upset that we did not get what we had really wanted from this one off trip.

I didn't mention the name of the agency that we booked through because we had used the agency for another booking and were very happy with them in that so, although we were angry with what happened here, we didn't know whether the fault lay with them or the company itself, so it seemed reasonable to give them a chance to make recompense before criticising them to everyone.

We have now heard back from them, and I am genuinely impressed with how they have dealt with the complaint.  They have told us that they were never given the updated information from the providing company.  Obviously we can't be certain whether that is true or not, but we have no reason to doubt it and it doesn't really matter, as they haven't tried to buck their responsibility to us.  In fact they have already offered us what we consider to be a very reasonable way of putting this right.

They have offered us another trip, free of charge, at the end of this year.  The trip they have offered is just to the Weddell Sea, gives us a better chance of seeing the emporer penguins, and is in fact a more expensive trip than the original one we took.  We know that giving us another trip is better for them than refunding us, but this looks like a win-win solution.  Taking them up on it means changing our plans for next year and obviously paying to get back to Ushuaia again, but we think that it will be worth it to be able to take this trip, which is ideal for what we wanted to see.  And luckily we are in in a position that we have the freedom to do that.

So I will now mention the name of the agency, which is Journey Latin America, and say that whilst something clearly went badly wrong in the first place, they have done a good job of putting it right, and we would happily use them again.

Antarctica - to the Weddell Sea - or not!

When we decided that we were going to give ourselves the extra treat of going to Antarctica, we spent a long time thinking about which trip we wanted.  We decided that our priorities were to see the big icebergs, and to see penguins, including having the slim chance of seeing emporer penguins.  So we decided to book a trip which went into the Weddell Sea.
The Weddell Sea is the eastern side of the peninsula, and so is colder and fewer people go there.  All of Antarctica has icebergs, but this area has the really big tabular icebergs.  And as the ship was still due to go a short way into the other side of the peninsula, we figured we would still be able to see a science station too.  So despite the date not being as good for us, which meant that we had to work other parts of our trip around it and incur more on travel costs, this was the trip we chose.

Had we not been going to the Weddell Sea we would have gone earlier in the season when there would be many more penguins, more ice in the peninsula, and longer hours of daylight, and we might have chosen a trip that went right to the Antarctic Circle.  Also, as there is more late availability on these trips, and we had the flexibility, we might just have gone to Ushuaia and waited for a two for one deal.  But the Weddell Sea had lured us in.

So decision made, we had been looking forward to the trip and we got on the boat, eager to get started on our Weddell Sea expedition.  Until the second day.  As we were crossing the Drake's Passage, the expedition leader gave us a rundown of the planned trip and activities, and showed a map with the places we were hoping to visit.  None of which were the Weddell Sea.

In some shock, I spoke to the staff and they confirmed that this trip was not, and in fact never had been, going to the Weddell  Sea.  Feeling rather confused, we checked our documents, and they were very clear about the itinerary going into the Weddell Sea, even as late as December 2011.  We later discovered that some of our fellow passengers had also booked a Weddell Sea trip through other agents, but had been notified back in April 2011 that it was not going there and given the opportunity to change or cancel their trip.

To say I was cross was an understatement, but clearly it was not the fault of the people on the ship, and there was nothing I could do about it now.  So we decided that we had to try to put the Weddell Sea out of our minds, forget about our anger with the agents, and get the best out of the trip we were actually on.  Inevitably though the trip was tainted with the knowledge that the trip was miss -sold, and that we would not be getting what we had wanted.

Thankfully, Antarctica is of course amazing, so it is impossible to go there and not enjoy.   And we did see some spectacular sights.  They just weren't the sights that we had paid to see and weren't the things that we would have prioritised had we been given the chance.   We emailed a letter to our agents as soon as we got back, complaining about what has happened.  It may seem strange to complain about something even though you enjoyed it, but the fact is that this was a very expensive trip that we will not be able to afford to repeat, and we didn't get what we bought or what we we would have chosen as an alternative if necessary.  It remains to be seen what the outcome of our complaint is, but you may see us on watchdog or something in months to come!

Anyway, the rest of our blogs on Antarctica will, like we tried to, not dwell on this and will instead focus on the positive side of our trip.