Normally our blog is a joint effort, but today is all Tim’s adventure.  Jay wasn’t feeling well and spent the day relaxing while Tim ventured onshore.

As promised on the previous post (Day 7), we headed for Deception Island.  It was called this because the island kind of looks like a donut with a hidden bay inside the island.  If you don’t approach the entrance from the correct direction, the entrance is hard to see, and effectively hidden.

The passage into the island is called Neptune’s Bellows, and it was quite fun sailing through that to then appear in a large open body of water (the bay).

Because we were in a (relatively) sheltered bay, the zodiac ride was relatively smooth with minimal splashing.

And for that matter, the landing was on a nice level black sand/stone beach, so the zodiac’s were able to just beach, and when you hopped out you were in ankle depth water, with an easy walk onto the beach.  Who would have thought, strolling along the beach in Antarctica. (Well super bundled up while strolling, but walking on the beach none-the-less.)

Here are the emergency supplies beached while we were off the ship.

In case we forgot to mention it earlier, when anyone gets off the boat and onto the continent, they have to first bring over 3-days of emergency rations and water, along with tents and other camping equipment in case the weather turns / ice float starts threatening the ship and it has to leave (with people shore-side).  This emergency gear would then allow those shore-side to survive until the ship could come back and get them.

Anyway, the bay inside Deception Island is called Whaler’s Bay because whalers used it up until the early 20th century to process their whales.  Many historical remnants still remain from their time there (which we had to stay away from).  Samples include:

And in the midst of exploring Whaler’s Bay, company arrived.  (Well, I guess it was THEIR beach, and we were the company.)  But penguins came up out of the water to see what was going on, while totally ignoring the flagging our expedition leaders set to tell us where to stick to. 

Since our mandate is to give penguins right of way (look to make sure you can back safely, and then back away), they really held up the human traffic being unable to get around them.

And of course we had a few others that just plopped down as if to say “MY BEACH”, I’m home…

After about an hour and a half exploration, we headed back to the boat.  Not knowing how many folks reading this have launched from a ship, here are some pictures showing how they do it.

A large “door” opens down on Deck 3, which then performs as the dock / pit operations for loading zodiacs.  There is another large door just starting to be visible to the left that is on Deck 4.  This one opens upwards exposing a “hangar” where all of the boats (zodiacs, kayaks, etc.) are stored.  They are then power winched down to the water from that deck.

Well, that just about captures the adventures we had today.  We’ll see you tomorrow.