The weather has been teasing us the last couple of days. Making our way back up north, hugged into the west coast of the Ross Sea (well it is west if we are travelling north!) along the Borchgrevink Coast, we aimed for and missed Coulman Island, Possession Islands, Cape Hallett, and the biggest blow, Cape Adare and Borchgrevink’s Hut.
It just hasn’t been safe enough to make any landings anywhere, due to either katabatic winds, excessive swell on the seas, too much ice on shore, a steep beach. Frustrating and disappointing for everyone, as several times we went into a holding pattern at a location, hoping that with time the weather would improve and allow a landing. In desperation, early morning and late evening zodiac cruises have been initiated, which simply resulted in frozen people (early morning) or under-exposed photography (late evening). It is interesting how a few hundred nautical miles north has made a big difference to the lighting at night. There is now almost a dark period from around 2-4am.
This morning, hopes were high for a landing, quickly dashed with the realisation that within 2 hours lots of ice had started to build up along the shore. So an ice cruise in the zodiacs was initiated after breakfast, and we saw loads and loads of greasy brash ice with hundreds of Adelie penguins plopping about, either on the ice, in the ice, or porpoising in the water. We chased a couple of Orcas for a while (Killer Whales) then headed back closer to the ice.
The highlight for our zodiac was seeing a leopard seal rise straight out of the water and grab a penguin, three times! We were a bloodthirsty lot in our zodiac!
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