12/2/08 14:00
Well we we’re lucky the Fleet Connection
lasted as long as it did, nonetheless it’s very disappointing to have lost
it. It went at 61 degrees 11
minutes South but came back briefly a couple of hours later and I was able to
send the missing pictures.
21:00
Amazing afternoon. Deception may have been ice free but 50
miles further South we encountered our first Icebergs and one on them was the
size of a small airport complete with a totally flat top runway. The water was
full of small bergy bits. The landscape of Trinity or
Trinidad
Island is
breathtaking. We inched our
way into Mikkelsen
Bay (yes I know I
misspelled it earlier) which is guarded by dozens of rocks. We anchored next to a small island with
a huge penguin colony and a refuge hut; to be investigated tomorrow morning.
Being downwind of the colony is a major assault on your olfactory senses. A huge leopard seal came to investigate
us just as we’d hauled the dinghy out of the water. He swam defiantly under the
hull. They are known to attack dinghies left afloat
overnight.
And here at anchor magically the Fleet
33 connection came back. I suppose it will come and go for a bit before finally
abandoning us, although we are only going another 90 miles or so due South
before we start working our way back toward the
Melchoir
Islands. In preparation for this trip I had
telephoned Inmarsat to check how far South we would have coverage and was told
we were going way too far. Obviously they didn’t know what they were talking
about. The coverage maps available
on the internet show coverage nearly down here from the Atlantic Ocean Region
East Satellite, and we have had to use the Atlantic Ocean Region West Satellite
since Ushuaia. So no one actually knows what they’re talking about. Tant
pis.
A small iceberg…well one several times bigger
than the boat is lurking fairly close to us.
The question is will it kiss us…or caress us,
or thump us…or give us a miss…in the end it decides to shun us and slip by. When
we anchored we put a trip line on the anchor with a fender as a float. No one
can see the fender at the moment so we wonder if the ice berg has swallowed
it.
After dinner, as we feel we’re really
arrived in Antarctica, Steve pops a bottle of Laubade Armagnac 1956, a 50th
birthday present from his golfing friends, Steve and Nancy. It is incredibly
smooth and lovely, and goes very well with some outrageous chocolate Gabriele
conjures up. We are very lucky on all fronts. As we think about bed, bits of ice
thump on the hull….
