So we've been at sea for two days now. We only got to stay in Punta Arenas one night because we're dropping off some Ukrainian scientists at their station, Vernodsky, on the way down. I was bummed because Punta Arenas seems like a pretty cool town. The the people were nice, the food was good, and of course Chilean wine. We did get to get out and about a bit before we had to report for Extreme Cold Weather gear checkout, a mini physical, and
ship orientation.
One thing that I really wanted to do, and had time for, was to rub the toe on the Ferdinand Magellan statue for good luck on the Drake Passage. This is in a little park in the center of town.
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| Shiny toe from all the rubbing. |
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| Touching the toe for good luck. |
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We found this little restaurant that we thought would be good because there was a line of locals out the door waiting to get in to the counter and order. We figured it must be good with a crowd like that, but decided to come back later in hopes the crowd would die down. When we go back, at noon, it had just closed. We found out that it served these papusa like breakfast sandwiches that were local to Punta Arenas. Heavy sadness that we missed out.
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| Me, John the doc, Mike the satcomm engineer, and Charles the electrician. |
After wandering around town one last time, it was time to get on the ship and head south. We boarded the ship and got underway immediately.
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| Preparing to board the Laurence M. Gould |
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Leaving Punta Arenas
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We were supposed to take a day to get down to the Drake Passage, two days to cross, and a day to go down the peninsula to Palmer Station. It turns out that there is a huge storm south of us with 30 foot seas. Normally it wouldn't be a problem because they just go around Cape Horn and would be gone by the time we got down there. Unfortunately, there is a low pressure system on the Atlantic side of Cape Horn that is pushing back on this storm and not letting it through. So we're putting along at 3 knots letting the storm get way ahead of us and hopefully over into the Atlantic. All the ship's crew has assured us that even if that happens we'll still get plenty of rock n roll across the Drake Passage, just not 30' rock n roll.
This storm delay is going to cause us to get into Palmer Station a day late, and will compress the turnover time we have by a day once we get there. Not ideal, but not terribly uncommon from what I've heard.
Anyway, bandwidth is limited on the ship, and we're only alloted 200 MB up/200 MB down per day, so blogging might be spotty on the way to Palmer. That, and seasickness might be a factor too (blogger doesn't have a barf emoji, so sad).
