Tuesday, 1 January 2019
Yankee Harbour, Antarctica
Wake up call as usual with the Expedition Leader’s Swedish tones over the tannoy, “My dear expedition travellers…”
Having crossed the calmer Bransfield Strait overnight, we’re now at the entrance to Deception Island. A caldera which you can sail into through Neptune’s Bellows, a narrow 600m gap in the volcanic walls of the caldera. The caldera is 11km long by about 5km wide. Whalers Bay is the first stop and see that the volcanic beach is steaming from the heat of the volcanic landscape. A couple of small tents on the hillside belong to two British researchers studying penguins. They come on board for breakfast and give some data to our guides to show us later. The maps produced by the data show how far penguins travel from the nest to gather food before the chicks are born (some distance) and after the chicks are born (closer to home). Fascinating insight. Data is captured by gluing three bits of kit to the penguin, camera, GPS tracker and a time-depth recorder. The British researchers are moaning about the French yacht moored in the bay. They were celebrating New Year’s Eve with very loud music. The British, in their tents, were not amused!
The whaling station originally started out as a fur sealing station in the 1820s, which subsequently declined. Whaling took over in the early 1900s, the remnants of which we see today rusting on the beach. More fascinating history just rusting away. In its day, Whalers Bay was bright red, awash with the whale blood from the whaling operation turning whale blubber into oil. The huge fuel oil tanks, boiler plant and accommodation huts still stand on the beach. Considering their age and the elements they’ve had to endure, there is still a lot to see and some of the equipment is surprisingly intact.
A large building at the end of the beach is the aircraft hangar. The beach was too short so the runway had a 20deg kink in it to make it longer. An old Aga oven still stands on its concrete base rusting away. Aga should use it for publicity!
A couple of weathered wooden crosses mark the cemetery where 35 people were laid to rest. One wooden cross is inscribed, ‘Tommern Hans Cuiliksen’, who died in 1928. Assume it’s the original wooden cross??
The advent of sea going vessels meant that palegic whaling took over and so the set up was no longer needed.
The beach is black lava rock and warm as it’s still volcanic. The warm water on the beach condensing in the cold air creates clouds of steam. Very atmospheric look.
Back on board the Ocean Nova, it’s a 4hr sail to Yankee Harbour. The ship has an open bridge, meaning that you can go in anytime and observe what’s going on. Really interesting. The Ukrainian navigator gives me little tour of the equipment. He basically taps in waypoints and the ship self drives itself to the next destination. We’ve apparently travelled 624 miles since we started this trip. I ask how far an iceberg is away from us on the port side. A quick check of the radar and it’s 1 mile away. It looks a lot closer, which shows how big the iceberg is and again no sense of scale.
Yankee Harbour. The final shore excursion on this amazing trip. It’s a stoney spit of land arcing out into the harbour. Surprising to see so many skeletons on the spit. Seals, penguin and whale. Walk along to the penguin rookery on the mainland. They’re all perched on nests protecting their month old chicks. They produce two chicks but feed the first born first. Second born only gets fed when first born is full. Needless to say, second born quite often dies. Chicks still have their fluffy feathers. Very comical watching then waddling about.
Post-dinner slide show of our trip. The first photos is yours truly at the head of a single line of Chinese walking away from the aircraft as we landed. I look massive compared to the Chinese. It elicits some laughter from them and they all turn around to look at going, “Aaah”. It’s enough to give you a complex about being tall!
Weigh anchor in Frei Base Station harbour at 2315hrs so should be a quiet night. We have a weather window tomorrow morning for the aircraft.
Feeling incredibly sad that it’s all over far too quickly.
