Day 21
Monday, February 12th
The Antarctic Circle, Fish Islands, Polar Plunge
We didn’t have any kayaking today because of the winds being too strong! 🙁
Around 9:30 AM we crossed the Antarctic Circle. Champagne was served and a celebration was held on the aft deck!
As we continued south toward our destination, the sea ice was packed too thickly for us to arrive at our stop at Detaille Island which is located just south of the Antarctic Circle, 66°52′S 66°47′W. It was the home of Station W. It is a well preserved abandoned British research station from the late 1950s. Crystal Sound, 66º45.492’ S, was our farthest location after the crossing of the Antarctic Circle. Since the winds were too strong for this landing, we were told we would be taking a short zodiac cruise instead and then heading back north!
In the meantime, Miko did a presentation on his experience at the Polish Antarctic Research Station. He is one of our marine biologists. It was fascinating what all he did while stationed there.
Later on Mike did a talk about how the different ice forms develop and other information about icebergs.
The winds were still too strong so we didn’t even get to do the zodiac cruise around Detaille Island! Maybe we’ll see it on another Antarctic Adventure. (I don’t think that will happen, but never say never!) The ship then started heading north toward the Fish Islands. We were going to attempt to do a zodiac cruise after dinner but it was too foggy here and we really want to see an Adelie penguin colony! We’re going to try tomorrow. I hope the weather cooperates. Since there wasn’t going to be a cruise at the Fish Islands either, we were going to do the Polar Plunge after dinner!
A few more pictures from the icebergs as we headed toward our anchor spot for the “plunge”!
Around 9:30 it was time for the Polar Plunge! There were 38 passengers and 2 of the expedition team members did the plunge too! We both took the plunge! The water temperature was 28 degrees F! It was cold! We jumped in and right back out but we can say we survived it.
They put a towel around us when we boarded and handed us a shot of vodka which we didn’t even taste! We went and took a warm shower, dressed quickly so we could see others jump from the upper decks! What adventures will tomorrow bring for us?
