At six o’clock this evening I set sail for Antarctica, which is not something I can say very often.
Things began rather inauspiciously with a walk in the rain due to the fact I arrived at 4.10pm for the 4.00pm bus, and it turned out four really did mean four. It was only a ten-minute stroll to the port from where I was, but the heavens chose that moment to open. The best that can be said of it is that my new jacket is indeed entirely waterproof. My jeans are not.
The Expedition was still moored where she has been since the day before yesterday, and I walked up the gangplank to find in the region of 20 people directing me where to go. The corridors were high and bright and not entirely unlike a hotel. I arrived at the main reception desk on deck four, and was then shown to the cabin. It was much larger than I had been expecting, with two single beds and an upper bunk that folds down from the wall. I chose the bed opposite that, as I was first into the room.
A while later my first roommate arrived, and in roughly ten minutes of conversation I learned that things he doesn’t like include, but are not limited to, sharing rooms, talking to people, working and not working. He also seemed to think in a passive aggressive way that by taking the best bunk, I had somehow impugned the honour of his mother. I wondered what were the chances of getting away with it if I quietly strangled him during the night. But I spoke to him more later and I think he is probably a decent old codger, if undoubtedly odd. He worked in telecoms for years and is now retired. But of course, he doesn’t like the word ‘retired’.
He’s among his people, though, as many of the people on the tour are retired. The average age is almost certainly north of fifty-five. Once we had got on board and settled in they talked us through the safety arrangements and gave us a demonstration of the sound that means we are in trouble – six short beeps followed by one long one over the PA system, which can be heard at any point in the ship. I think if such a cacophony actually started up unexpectedly we would lose half the passengers to heart-attacks before they ever got near a life-jacket.
The safety information took on something of a new resonance later on when I learned that a few years ago the previous version of this ship struck an underwater iceberg and sank. All of the passengers and crew survived and ended up with a good story for parties, and apparently the captain was not at fault.
Once I was settled in and we had had our safety briefing I went off to explore the ship, finding that below decks many places look the same. It is very easy for me to lose my sense of direction, look out a window, and wonder why the ship is going backwards. Most of the facilities are on deck four, which level with the main deck of the ship. There is a library with large windows and a few hundred books, including a bizarrely large number of Lonely Planet guidebooks – I suspect it is in fact the full set. There are also lots of books on the Antarctic, one of which I have borrowed. The room is comfortable and welcoming and not far from what I would like to have in my own house one day.
Near the front of the ship on deck four there is a large assembly area with firmly-anchored chairs around low tables, which is where the safety announcement was. The chairs rotate, which tends to happen with the movement of the boat whether you want it to or not. There are a few screens to project slides, so there was a touch of a bizarro-corporate presentation about it. Directly above this area, on deck five,  is the dining area. Dinner was served at half seven – four courses plus coffee. I had pork, which was pretty good. The company was excellent. I ate with Lindsey (a guy) and Deidre, Jenny, Jag (a girl), Jay (a girl), Andrea, Anthony (who has been travelling for 23 months) and Jenny. I made a special effort to remember the names.
After that I went up and watched the final light fade from the sky about 9.30pm, the sun long since below the horizon. I got a lovely shot of the moon reflected in the water. On the top deck there is a compass to see which direction you are headed, mounted behind glass at the top of a short post. On the way down I saw that the bridge, which had previously been closed, was now open for visitors. I knocked and was let in, but then they didn’t tell me very much and I was left wandering around trying to figure out what things were. They told me to come back during the day and I could have my picture taken in the captain’s chair. Make it so.
It’s a little after 11pm as I write this, and about 2am we should expect to hit the waters of the Drake Passage. In the briefing folder in the room it says that in a storm on a ship there are two kinds of items – things that are on the ground, and things that will be on the ground. So keep your camera and anything else breakable low down, is the message. The man in the bridge said the wind on the passage is 20 knots from the starboard side, which his tone made clear is a wind suitable only for little girls. Around 50 knots is when he gets interested. From the other side, though – i.e. from port – things are different, for reasons that are not quite clear to me, and a relatively low wind can have bigger impact. In the bridge I spent a long time looking at two screens, one showing a map and one (which he turned on especially to show me) showing the sonar. There were many acronyms and pieces of information that I did not understand. This whole world is very nearly entirely unknown to me.
To finish off the evening I went to the bar at the stern for a drink after dinner and chatted to an Australian woman who used to work with disabled people, helping them find the will to live, which sounded wrenching. She stopped doing it a few years ago. I had the feeling that in the right circumstances she would talk about it for days. Form there I came back to the cabin, and my roomie has just come in, so it’s time to settle down. Not a lot to do tomorrow, but we’re up at 7am all the same, presumably to get us in on the routine.
And tomorrow, as the captain said in his welcome speech, Mr Drake is waiting for us.
