By: Brian Grady
Submitted: 2010-08-19 14:40:17 | Word Count: 762
Two nautical charts overlap on the ship's navigation table. They both showed these were waters that had yet to be surveyed. The concerned captain relies on depth soundings to chart a safe course. This channel is new to him, though he's sailed the Antarctic many, many times.
We can hardly see as the snow begins to fall and dusk comes upon us. When the flakes hit the bridge windows, they stick and make it hard to see the huge icebergs blocking our path. Each obstruction is clearly illuminated by the ship's radar. Strangely, the icebergs are shown in orange on the monitor. The monitor shows the channel nearly blocked by one gigantic orange blob. Three kilometers separate the ship from the mass.
[ advertisement ]
The captain issues a quiet command as we near the one kilometer mark. The ships course is smoothly changed by the helmsman's expert maneuvering. Though we can barely make it out at first, the tabular iceberg, unique to the southern ocean, appears like ghostly in the fog and snow. This type of iceberg sports a flat, wide top with sides that rise straight upwards.
The sheer size found me dumbstruck, as only Antarctica was capable of doing. We'd boarded the polar class cruise vessel with the intention of reaching the Antarctic Circle. Having passed many unsettled and unoccupied areas of the planet, we are nearly there. It took 79 years after Antarctica was found for someone to winter on the continent. Scientist followed after the first explorers who wanted to find the South Pole, but perished. Now you don't have to be an independently-wealthy individual to travel to Antarctica. Now, for about the same cost as going to the Caribbean, you can visit the seventh continent.
Some compare Antarctica to the shape of a manta ray with a curved tail. The very most northern tip of Antarctica is still 500 ocean miles from South America. The area is known for its perpetually bad seas and is called Drakes Passage. Reaching Antarctica by passing through this area, which has also been called the ,Slobbering Jaws of Hell, is difficult, but worthwhile. A reminder to make sure our cabin portholes are tightly latched and that our gear is thoroughly stowed before we retire comes from one caring passenger.
Our ship left the Argentine port city of Ushuaia and passed through the Beagle Channel. Later we reached open ocean. We continued on for two days in very turbulent waters. Nearly gale-forced winds pounded us the whole time. The spray splashed even above my fourth-deck window as waves crashed across the bow. Though it usually depended on how seasick you felt, you could see swells that were between fifteen and forty feet.
Two days out of South America, we found the Southern Ocean. A coastal archipelago was my first view the next morning. The waters were calmed a little by the land. Super tall mountains wore wispy clouds at their peaks. The glaciers and ridges were dramatically different; the smooth whiteness of the glaciers seemed light years away from the angular darkness of the ridges. Frozen slab ice entered the water. It was rough and bumpy, cracked and dirty. Looking like the range in which you'd find Everest, it sticks straight up out of the water.
The trip to the continent is similar, according to one passenger, to the labor of childbirth. Antarctica is the world's windiest, driest, coldest and highest continent. It shares the same amount of moisture that Death Valley receives, though holds seventy percent of the world's fresh water reserves. This continent doesn't have an indigenous human population, animals that call it home all year round, or even an owner.
In this rough environment, shore landings, as well as sailing routes, all depend on the weather. Our guides remind us that flexibility is key. Then our first landfall becomes available. The groups to which we'd been assigned assembled on deck. An inflatable boat hauls my group of ten across the water. My group of ten nears the trip's zenith as the driver powers the boat towards land. And then, with just one step, I am among the few who can say they've stood on the Antarctic Continent.
