I am inside the body of this great orange ship (revised colour) which is constantly on the move, taking me further away from home and closer to the Antarctic. There is no escape from the endless rocking motion. The ship doesn’t stop, it just keeps on going. I occasionally break free to the surface only to see water in all directions, howling winds, five metre waves crashing all around. The sight of the ocean is intimidating and spectacular at the same time. There has been a fairly constant cover of cloud with occasional pockets of blue sky. The temperature is progressively getting cooler and the daylight longer. The sun no longer sets. There are often albatross and other sea birds flying alongside the ship, soaring gracefully over the air currents. These birds fly and fly all day long only to rest on the ocean swells. They live in constant motion. Fascinating life.
I stumble along the corridors like a drunk, bouncing between the walls, I am thrown around my bunk and showers could be considered an extreme sport. The other day I managed a double somersault which would have scored well had I landed it. There is the continuous sound of the engines and the crashing of the ship over the waves. Each crash sends huge shudders through the ship. There is also the intense shrieking sound of the stabilisers beneath the ship. A lot of people have been bed ridden, some from the first night of the voyage. I genuinely have not seen some people for over a week since boarding. I am sorry for them, but also pleased that I have been strong enough and sensible enough to keep my act together throughout the journey. I have maintained a sense of normality – exercising everyday, not skipping meals, not over sleeping and generally just taking it easy. It is exhausting keeping it together all the time.
I find talking with the other people on the ship and observing their passion in their field of research inspiring. A wide range of specialties are represented onboard. The meteorologists focus on the sky and the wind and the different cloud formations and how all the elements of the atmosphere influence our weather, while the geologists sample all different types of rocks and the different minerals contained within to date the rocks and gain a greater understanding of the history of the Earth. I think I will look at the sky and rock outcrops I see in my travels a little differently from now on. It has given me a greater appreciation of simple things I generally take for granted but when you think about are really quite amazing.
Events for the week included the sighting of the first iceberg, 89 metres in length (a few metres shorter than the ship). It appeared on the horizon as a small white lump and progressively got bigger and bigger as we narrowed in on it. Everybody got up on deck to take plenty of photos. The first feature to look at in almost a week. It was fun. It was also pretty bloody cold. The first iceberg also brought in the first snow fall. Perfectly formed little snow flakes sprinkled across the ship. We then went a couple of days without seeing any bergs, but now there are usually a dozen or so around us at any one time. I have done two shifts on iceberg patrol. Counting and measuring the length of icebergs that drift within 6 nautical miles of the ship, to support glaciology studies. Measuring is a simple process of reading an angle using a sextant and using the ships radar to observe a distance range to the iceberg. It is then just a matter of simple trigonometry to calculate the approximate length of the iceberg. The biggest berg I’ve seen so far was 2km in length.
Respect was payed to King Neptune and an entourage of his minions who boarded the ship as we crossed the line of 60 degrees latitude. The king granted us all safe passage through his realm after we each kissed his fish and feet and graciously accepted a douse of a concoction of whale blubber and seal snot.
Thousands of dollars were raised for camp quality in an evening of mass head shearing. A number of blokes said goodbye to there locks, including your humble narrator. That’s right. I now have more hair on my scruffy beard than atop my head. About $250 was raise to shave me down. For the novelty I chipped in $50 to get a TV presenter from Totally Wild (and ex big-brother housemate - Wes) to do me the honour. The hair is much easier to manage now (zero effort) although I am noticing the cold a bit more.
We also had a fund raiser trivia night for camp quality. I hadn’t been to a trivia night since I was living in Darwin. A fun night, lots of laughing and I even managed to contribute some answers. During the night I had one of those moments where you go hang on I’m in the middle of the Southern Ocean, on a ship, joking around in a trivia quiz. This is ridiculous. I’ll tell you what else is ridiculous. This time last year I was snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef just out from Port Douglas, as I made my way down the east coast of Australia. Now I’m beyond 60 degrees latitude and on my way to the bottom of the planet. It seems, like the ship and the albatross, I too am in constant motion.
