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Reflections And The Philosophical Side Of My Time In Antarctica | Ross Sea and East Antarctic
Antarctic Reflections As Life Goes On I’m writing this in the wee hours of the morning three weeks after stepping off the ship. The amnesia still hasn’t kicked in. The last days of this 4 month odyssey were a nightmare and the memories are still raw. I’m really looking forward to that subsiding so I can enjoy the three months of great memories that were made on that boat and the precious time down in Antarctica. I know that will come. Perhaps as I look though my thousands of pictures and recall those special memories of curious penguins, of languid seals, of majestic whales, of magical skies and of the ever present frozen sculptures floating in our midst. Antarctic Seeps Into Your Soul I’m still without the right words for it and hopefully they will come in time, but Antarctica is enthralling. It’s raw. It’s pristine. It’s unlike any place you’ve ever experienced. The wildlife is unafraid and curious. There’s a deep peace that settles inside you when you stare out across the Antarctic Ocean, across the frozen tundra. To think that these animals thrive here is mind boggling. It’s harsh and beautiful. It takes no prisoners but lavishes you with magic and mystery. Of auroras and mirages. Of phenomenon that I’ll never experience anywhere else. The stark serenity. It draws you in and settles in your soul. Every molecule that makes me up feels connected to this place and its inhabitants. Every part of it must be cherished and protected. I’m not sure I will ever experience ever again such untouched wilderness. Unspoiled. No plastic floating in the water. No visual evidence of humanity other than the climactic impact that leaves no part of our world unaffected. Antarctica Feels Humanity’s Indulgence Humanity is, however, tugging hard on the Antarctic strings now. I sense that whaling will resume and they are now hauling out krill by the hundred of tons so that people can have omega-3 capsules. As John Muir poignantly states, “When one tugs on a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world”. Let that settle into your soul. The significance of this quote is especially true in Antarctica. You can see the strings pulling in Antarctica, a place that few of us will experience and, as such, should be free from our ravenous ways. As human beings and stewards of this planet, we need to keep something sacred. We can’t keep ravaging every last little bit of nature. Nothing will remain, we know that, and yet, that is exactly what we are doing. It breaks my heart! Climate Care and Conscientious Consideration I hate to end this post on such a depressing note. It sounds cliché and I suppose it is these days, but my God, every single one of us needs to be mindful. We need to open our eyes and really contemplate how we are personally pulling on nature’s strings. Are you buying the krill oil? Why? Is meat at every meal necessary? Doubt it! How much waste do you create? Where is it going? What are the things that you can do differently so you lessen your impact and pull fewer of natures strings? Every little thing that we do can add up and hopefully save these wild places. Leave what is managing to survive alone. Let’s not touch every last reserve. Let’s back off. Use what we’ve already created or mined or produced. Ease up on wanting the newest, the latest and greatest. That ‘want’ serves billionaires at the expense of our planet and makes you a mindless slave to marketing. It’s time to wake up and consider that you to have a part to play in this climate crisis. Big Life, Small Impact For my part, for my health and for the planet, I’m going to become mostly vegetarian and drastically limit my dairy consumption. I’m looking forward to cruising more as well. I find living in developing countries easier to be closer to my environmental values. Local produce. Prohibitively expensive oversees groceries. It’s great! The more local we all can live, the better! I am in no way perfect or a model for how to live, but I don’t expect perfection of me or anyone. I just want to see each of us taking baby steps to a better future for all the living beings on this planet. As Maya Angelou says, “When you know better, you do better.” You know better! Climbing off my soapbox, please let these pictures of Antarctica soak into your soul. It’s not untouched but it’s the closest thing we have. If you feel compelled, join the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, an organization actively working to protect Antarctica, Earth’s last great wilderness. Let’s save this wild place!
Unhappy In Hobart | Hobart, Australia
Sunday-Wednesday, 17-20 March 2024Day 114-118 of 110ish Unfortunately for Amy, the welcoming back to land ended up painful and drawn out. Celebration Time St. Patrick’s Day and also Richard’s 70th birthday. A wonderful family lunch was planned at Richard and Bev’s house where we got to meet Bev’s daughter, Rochelle, granddaughter Olivia and friend of the family and Rochelle’s boyfriend, Chris. What a great time! Lots of laughter and getting to know everyone. Amy Loath To Return To AA Unfortunately, I had to cut the time short and get shuttled back to the Antarctic Aurora to help with dinner. Every part of me didn’t want to do this. Sigh… With my big girl panties on, I boarded the boat again. I went straight to the galley to catch up with Damo. Damo and brother Dylan were hard at work whipping up dinner and didn’t need my assistance. Perfect! On the way to my cabin, I got drawn into OJ’s cabin to have a couple beers with OJ, Frannie, and Shawn. It was a nice way to come back to the boat. Then I got summoned up to the galley. Time to get back to work! Like a whirling dervish I did what I had done best for the last four months and did the dishes and got the mess ready. Dinner served. One meal done. My Cabin Was Robbed Afterwards, I slinked to my cabin to get some sleep and met with intense disappointment. I had been robbed. One night away from my cabin and my nail kit, tweezers, lotion, Bluetooth headphones and (not until much later did I find out) my Melanzana hoodie from Colorado were all missing My head was spinning. Did I take these things back to Tom’s dad’s house? Surely not. I’m positive they were in the cabin. In the spirit of Australian Longline, they turned off Starlink as we were coming into port so I had no way of getting in touch with Tom. I had to wait until the next day to activate our SIM card. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep well. I woke up and did breakfast. After brekkie, I helped Damo until he didn’t seem to need me and then I made myself scarce to sort out the SIM card and get in touch with Tom. Job done. I called Tom and he checked our stuff. The missing items were nowhere to be seen. It is confirmed that I had been robbed. What a deeply disturbing and disappointing way to end the trip. Once I was back on board, I went straight to the bridge and told Tangi what happened. He said he would ask around the crew and suggest that the items needed to reappear overnight. They didn’t. They never did. Nothing ever happened about it. Deeper disappointment. Pathetic really. Living In A Dark World After lunch, I went back into town again. I needed a hair cut and I needed some internet time and I needed to be away from the boat. It felt hostile. I was so deeply bitter. Plus, and this became important around dinner time, I thought Damo and I agreed that if I did brekkie, he would do dinner so that we both didn’t have to work horrendously long days. Well, just before dinner, I got a message from Tom saying that Damo was looking for me. I made my way to the galley where I was yelled at by both Damo and Dylan asking where the %$#%$# I was. Being at my wits end and tired, my response was not gracious. I let rip! I yelled right back that we had an agreement and I had been up since 0400. He was to do dinner. Nevertheless, I got stuck in and helped out since it was chaos. F*ck me! What a horrible day! Afterwards, I called Tom and tried to calm down. Just as I was getting ready to say goodbye to Tom and go upstairs to talk to Damo about tomorrow, there was a knock on the door. It was Damo with his hat in his hand. We both agreed to bury the hatchet and that there was obviously a big miscommunication. We decided to both work every meal to keep it fair. Long days but fair days. And that’s how the next day(s) played out. Peace, Love And Get My Out Of Here Peace settled across the land. The next day was going alright and I was excited to get off the boat. However, it became abundantly clear that this wasn’t going to be our last day. Unloading was going very slowly. The flights of the crew got rebooked and we all had to stay on one extra day. Yet another disappointment. I gritted my teeth. I bore the disappointment and the knowledge that I would have to suck up the pain of another day. Another day of wasting horrendous amounts of food and doing an insane amount of dishes. I’m certainly grateful of how Tom operates as a cook. I’m so grateful we worked so well together over the last four months. Right now, it seems like a dream and a miracle at the same time! Tarnation What a sad way to end this amazing trip. For now, the trip remains spoilt and tarnished by these last days…probably the last weeks. The theft and lack of follow up really put a vile taste in my mouth for this whole situation. After four months of me looking after these guys and then one or two of them do this to me and still look me in the eye day after day. Disgusting! It’s been a drag and right now the amnesia certainly hasn’t set in. This is painful! I cried myself to sleep. I’m so over it! So another full day worked. Thankfully this is the last. I’m over it. Damo is over it. Everyone is over it. There are no heartfelt goodbyes. Completely anticlimactic. Can’t Disembark Fast Enough I just walked off the boat with what remained of my stuff. A lovely lady, Celia, helped me down the ramp and drove me and my bags to the gate. That was greatly appreciated. I needed that! Tom picked me up after dinner and it was finally over. I don’t think I believed it. I wanted to sleep, scream and sob all at the same time. Get My Out Of My Life The disappointments unfortunately didn’t end there. Tom and I had a set to in the morning when I woke up about our miscommunication. I jumped out of bed and climbed the nearest hill to clear my head and gather my thoughts. Holy moly are my calves and shins feeling these walks! The pain in my legs was nothing to what my heart was feeling. Tom and I had a talk. I cried more. We made amends. I’m clearly at the limit of what I can tolerate. Plus, my last paycheck was wrong and that has turned into a struggle because, of course, as life would have it, I’ll probably get paid in the new financial year which messes up the tax strategy I had with my accountants for exiting my NZ residence. Just one last disappointing blow. I’m really done now. I can’t take any more!
The Steam Home From Antarctica | East Antarctica To Hobart, Australia
Monday-Saturday, 4-16 March 2024Day 103-114 of 110ish We are steaming home…it’s a bittersweet time. Adios Antarctica Well, the day finally came! We are steaming home. While the crew were eating my final brekkie (yay!) I went out to the back of the boat and watched the sun set on Antarctica. The sun was almost warm. It felt so comfortable and peaceful on the stern. I shed a bittersweet tear as the sky melted into the most vivid cast of pastels. This beautiful place has crawled deep into my heart. The colours. The magic. The inquisitive wildlife. The raw, frozen beauty everywhere. My heart is full. I will carry Antarctica with me for the rest of my life. With Antarctica fading into the distance, it’s time to look ahead to our time in Tasmania. And thus began shopping and scheming!!! We are certainly excited for our time in Australia, both seeing Tom’s dad, Richard, and Bev plus we get to bum around with some friends in Queensland. Digging Deep This last little bit is certainly the hardest though. The ingredients are low. Crew morale is waning and the cleaning is beginning. We’re having to dig a bit deeper now to push through this last bit without wanting to give up. We will. We’re tough. But it’s not without its pain. Plus, as we cross the Southern Ocean towards Tasmania, the boat no longer has it’s stability tanks and we’ve dumped all of our offal (the fish and food that has gone through the hasher) so the boat is wallowing and making for a much more uncomfortable crossing than when we journeyed southward four months ago. This is very tiring to an already exhausted crew. The dishwasher that errors out multiple times before proceeding. The refrigerator door that doesn’t stay open but, because the other one won’t keep a low enough temp, we are forced to use, the slippery floor with little traction and drains in the wrong place, partial lee boards on the bunks….all these little annoyances that we’ve lived with are starting to pull the curse words out of us now! And the guys not cleaning up after themselves. That always gets worse during gentleman’s hours and this time is no exception. Not closing doors properly so the contents distribute themselves wildly across the mess, using the food scrap bin that gets dumped in the ocean as a rubbish bin (a very big pet peeve of mine!), and leaving dirty dishes all over for me (crew mom) to clean up. It’s too late to complain with only days left. Well, that’s enough whining and winging for now. Aurora-licious On the positive side, though the icebergs are now gone and there’s nothing to see but a great expanse of ocean, if the sky is clear enough overnight, the aurora is always on. I love to stand outside and marvel at it and take way too many bad photos! Nate said the other day that he doesn’t know what the big deal about the aurora is. I find that really sad. It’s one of the most spectacular natural phenomena this world has on offer and he can’t be bothered. Where are you in life when you can’t appreciate that you are being blessed to experience something like this? Land Adjustment Well, six more days until we reach land. I’ve been told it’s a bit of a shock to the system. I’m pretty easy going and tend to handle change pretty well so it will be interesting to see how I react. I’ve been told you really, really smell land, that people are overwhelming (we’ve been with only 23 others for the last 4 months), and that there’s a sensory overload. I guess the grocery store is the first place that can do that! Sights, smells, sounds, stressed people and busyness. I’m very curious to see how I deal with it. Now, it’s time to start thinking about packing. It really feels surreal. It’s been groundhog day for so long that it’s hard to imagine life any other way. It’s almost like a form of shock. I don’t think I’ll quite fathom what happened until a little while down the road. It still seems like a dream…well, it’s still a little bit of reality! Tick…Tock We’re counting the days, the meals, the seconds we have left. Luckily we’re arriving a day earlier than anticipated. One less day to sleep in an uncomfortable bed. One less day of having to make meals and clean up after other people. And closer to a Vietnamese meal cooked with fresh veggies and herbs! Some blessings we are looking forward to on land – a nice haircut for Amy, tattoos for both of us, estrogen pills to calm Amy’s power surges, and our new toy…a drone that shouldn’t crash into the ocean like the DJI crap we’ve been battling. Yay!!! Two days out and now there’s a bit more of a buzz around the boat. We are all cleaning and packing, filling out customs forms, the bridge has booked the pilot, and doing all the things to get us back to land. It’s very exciting! Job Done! We will finish cleaning the galley today and then other than the last meals, that’s us! Job done…well, I have a few more days left in port but Tom gets to put his feet up since he’s not allowed to work in Australia on an Australian battleship 😛 We arrived early! We see Tasmania! Tonight the sun is setting on a jagged horizon marked with peaks and valleys and little satellite islands. So we lurk. We will both wake up early tomorrow morning so the boys can have a good brekkie before coming into port. This will be Tom’s last meal. Lucky bugger! We have put the finishing touches on our bags. I have left some bits and pieces behind for my last few days on the boat while unloading is happening. (I’ll deeply wish I hadn’t) Hello Hobart This morning as we started to approach Hobart, we had a welcoming crew and a rowdy one at that. Dolphins! Always a welcome sight and I couldn’t get enough of them. They were jumping completely out of the waves. They seemed just as happy for us to arrive as we were! The shafts of sunrise through clouds was gorgeous along the Tasmanian coast as we made our way up Storm Bay into the guts of Hobart. As long as the wind was right, instead of smelling the smoke stacks, you could sniff an earthy eucalyptus smell on the breeze. Bliss! We passed the Iron Pot Lighthouse, many oyster farms, and a sailing regatta as we made our way to the dock. Once docked, our luggage in place for a quick retreat, we waited for customs to check us in to the country and bio security to go through the galley. After all that was complete, we made a hasty retreat. Unfortunately, Richard, Tom’s dad didn’t get our email asking to pick us up. We waited outside the security gate for a while before Tom went off in search of internet. His search turned into buying roaming minutes which didn’t work and then a taxi to take us to the house. The excitement of reuniting father and son turned into multiple bottles of wine. Needless to say, Tom woke up with quite the hangover. Annoyed but not surprised, I, not having indulged and keen to explore, went for an early morning walk to check out the area while he slept off the night before.
Changing Of Seasons And Stocktake | East Antarctica
Tuesday-Sunday, 27 February to 3 March 2024Day 96-102 of 110ish The seasons are changing Autumn In Antarctica This is crazy. It really does feel like autumn has come to Antarctica. It’s noticeably colder around the boat and the night time is getting a lot longer quickly! And the weather has packed in for our last week here. I don’t know if that’s the seasonal change or just a weather system but it’s gray and snowy and bleak outside. No whales. Mmmmmm….not my favourite farewell. Moods Continue To Go South While the night time is getting longer and longer, tempers are getting shorter and shorter. The mood is definitely muted on the boat and the weather isn’t helping. Everyone is ready to go and quickly losing their ‘cares’. We are all counting the days. Tom and I are just looking forward to our time exploring Tassie with Tom’s dad and partner, Bev. Comfy bed, long walks, seeing new things, meeting new people and not working! Feral Mould And Foul Moods Oh and now someone has complained about the mould in one of the fridges. We know who it is. Our evil engineer. Just another little kick to make us even more ready to leave. One of the fridges is warmer than the other by a couple degrees centigrade. This has made the onions grow a nice layer of mould on the outer skin, kill some of them, and make the potato bags mould as well. The other day I mentioned to Tom that you can actually really smell the mustiness when you walk in there now. So what did we do…something! Tom emptied the cooler fridge, cleaned it from top to bottom so it wreaks of bleach, and stocked it with the goodies from the mouldy fridge. The complaint came two days later. Dumb and annoying! Moving on…as always! Stocktake Sucks We are now doing stocktake, which is a painful process of counting the stores that are leftover from the trip. As the outgoing cook ordered far too much on top of what was already on the boat, it’s a huge task. Needless to say, the outgoing cook’s name is mud…thick, dumb, lazy mud! Toastie Wars And now we’ve learned that the two of the engineering team, Chief Jerk and Javed, are making toasties and ‘selling’ them to the boys for $5 each…well, namely Tangi and OJ that I know about. Tom is most unimpressed and let down by Tangi, especially after a recent conversation they only just had about something similar. I only found out because I broke my reading glasses and went down to the Engineering Room to find Andrei and a tube of super glue. Andrei, being the wonderful soul that he is, went to fetch super glue and came back with another pair of specs that he reckons make him look like a girl! So I now have a fancy pair of transition reading glasses. Thanks Andrei!!!! I needed that boost of faith in humanity. He got a big hug! Leap Year Day And Icebergs Showing Off Tomorrow is 29 February! Leap Year Day! Nothing particularly special happened until the next day. Only a couple more lines to shoot and haul and in a couple days we leave. 1 March started with a stunning evening…clear skies and calm seas. No whales but today ended up being the day of the interesting icebergs! Antarctica keeps dazzling me right to the bitter end. First thing I saw when I got to the galley was a surreal looking jade iceberg in the distance. And later the same morning, as I was in the wheelhouse without any cameras (of course), I saw my first iceberg calve off a chunk. We were all on tenterhooks waiting to see if it would roll over since it was a decent sized berg. Alas, it didn’t, but it certainly readjusted! Tooooo cool for words! Then an hour later, we had to pick up a line where the floats had found a nice little home right next to a large iceberg. So there we were…nuzzling up quite close and having a very intimate moment with a large iceberg. Luckily everything went perfectly! Unfortunately it was dark so the photos aren’t that great but it was a really neat experience getting THAT close! Despite the darkness, I could see all the striations in the berg. You could hear the waves crashing against it. Simply incredible and kudos to Frannie for the great maneuvering! Mirages And Other Miracles Well, this morning, I hope, was my second or third to last breakfast! It went ok but the great part was that the Fata Morgana mirage appeared on the horizon again. I was really hoping to see this one last time and photograph it properly before we left and Antarctica delivered…again! Such a magical and wondrous place! In other news, the stocktake is about 99% done. Incredible! Truly a small miracle. Tom did a fantastic and thorough job. I grunted through my part of it. It’s a relief to have that out of the way. All we have to do next is a deep clean but we’ll wait until we’re near port for that.