February 16 Crossing into the Antarctic Circle!

Now we were really heading into the cold! At 3:00 am six days after we set sail from Bluff, and while we were adrift on dreams of icebergs and penguins, we crossed the Antarctic Circle 66 34 S; 168 53 E.  With the exception of a small part of the Antarctic Peninsula, Antarctica lies entirely within the Antarctic Circle.

Part of the Peninsula lies outside the Antarctic Circle. Its location and geology means that the Peninsula tends to be a little warmer than the rest of Antarctica which is basically solid state ice - a huge land mass covered by a 3km thick ice cap.

We awoke that auspicious morning to a soft silent world with a light blanket of snow over the ship sparkling in the sunlight. Absolutely beautiful! We all felt a mounting fizz of excitement with every passing hour as we came ever closer to sighting land. And the day only got better and better. You have to be out there to really appreciate just how vast and powerful the Southern Ocean is.

We woke to snow on our window!

I guess I’m a kid at heart - I just love snow !

Our expedition leader Samuel dressed up a bit crazy to mark our crossing the Antarctic Circle. We drank mulled wine and got a penguin stamp on our foreheads. Silly but fun

As we headed further south we had a briefing about what to do in the event of an abandon-ship alert. Donning a immersion suit looked like a shocker but in the temperatures we were experiencing, essential. We didn’t need to in the end but on a previous voyage they had to abandon ship for some hours - don’t recall the reason but it was rather sobering to contemplate.

For an hour or so, a small pod of Humpback whales played ‘ring a rosy’ with us each circling the other in a delightful dance of curiosity and welcome. They were feeding close to the surface (we think) but definitely also putting on a performance for us - diving under and swimming flank to flank with our ship, rolling over and surfacing so close to the ship that we could see every barnacle. 

Such beautiful creatures. 'Happywhale' engages citizen scientists to identify individual marine mammals for science. I'm not sure my pix were good enough but I'll have a closer look. We have lots in the waters off Australia so check this out https://happywhale.com/ I was happy with these stunning creatures. Their size and survival is very humbling.

The mood of the ship was one of excitement and expectation heightened by a briefing on Cape Adare where we hoped to make our first Antarctic landing early the next morning.