Chile and Antarctica cruise

[RooFlyer]

Iceberg production never stops around here





As we approached the tip of the island sheltering us from the ocean, it turned dark, as if foreshadowing our Drake Passage transit!









One last mega iceberg before we turned north the make the run to Cape Horn, and of course the Captain just can't resist doing one last close drive-by






Its bigger and closer than it looks here

 

[latawiec]

Iceberg production never stops around here

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As we approached the tip of the island sheltering us from the ocean, it turned dark, as if foreshadowing our Drake Passage transit!

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One last mega iceberg before we turned north the make the run to Cape Horn, and of course the Captain just can't resist doing one last close drive-by


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Its bigger and closer than it looks here

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Re: "Iceberg production never stops around here".

Antarctica and Greenland are the biggest stores or fridges of the fresh water on the Earth.
And there is a closed cycle to dislodge the very slow ice stream or ice rivers into the oceans. The melting starts after dislodging these icebergs into salt water of oceans. It is very interesting subject... that was studied by the Antarctic scientists about year 2000.

 

[Pushka]

Re: "Iceberg production never stops around here".

Antarctica and Greenland are the biggest stores or fridges of the fresh water on the Earth.
And there is a closed cycle to dislodge the very slow ice stream or ice rivers into the oceans. The melting starts after dislodging these icebergs into salt water of oceans. It is very interesting subject... that was studied by the Antarctic scientists about year 2000.

Why did I read that as Ice Cream? It's so humid in SA now, I want one!

 

[latawiec]

Why did I read that as Ice Cream? It's so humid in SA now, I want one!

....

 

[latawiec]

Re: "Iceberg production never stops around here".

Antarctica and Greenland are the biggest stores or fridges of the fresh water on the Earth.
And there is a closed cycle to dislodge the very slow ice stream or ice rivers into the oceans. The melting starts after dislodging these icebergs into salt water of oceans. It is very interesting subject... that was studied by the Antarctic scientists about year 2000.

Re: With reference to the above regarding the glaciers and ice streams of Antarctica dislodging into oceans.

Although main studies on flow of ice streams in Antarctica was performed around the year 2000, with many scientific papers published at the times, the most recent summary could be found in the following paper:

Melting and freezing beneath the Ross ice streams, Antarctica

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 September 2017

It includes interesting summary and also a lot of references.

Melting and freezing beneath the Ross ice streams, Antarctica | Journal of Glaciology | Cambridge Core

Melting and freezing beneath the Ross ice streams, Antarctica - Volume 50 Issue 168

www.cambridge.org

 

[latawiec]

Re: "Iceberg production never stops around here".

Antarctica and Greenland are the biggest stores or fridges of the fresh water on the Earth.
And there is a closed cycle to dislodge the very slow ice stream or ice rivers into the oceans. The melting starts after dislodging these icebergs into salt water of oceans. It is very interesting subject... that was studied by the Antarctic scientists about year 2000.

Antarctica has many bog lake under the ice cup (subglacial lakes). And there are very interesting articles about them.

"Subglacial lakes under ice streams appear to speed ice flow".

The Antarctic Sun: News about Antarctica - Subglacial Waterworks

Scientists have known that lakes exist beneath Antarctica’s ice sheets since the late 1960s, but only more recently have glaciologists like Slawek Tulaczyk discovered that the subglacial waterworks appears to play a key role in ice sheet dynamics.

antarcticsun.usap.gov

An inventory of active subglacial lakes in Antarctica detected by
ICESat (2003–2008)

https://websites.pmc.ucsc.edu/~thorne/EART204/Reading/Read_17_Tulaczyk.pdf

In 2016 there were accounted over 400 subglacial lakes on the Antarctica. Read more about them:

https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2014.0306

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2014.0306

 

[RooFlyer]

We had a 48 hour transit of the Drake Passage - notorious for being rough. The first 24 for us were quite bumpy - 3-4m swells, much like lour Falklands to Sth Georgia stuff, but quite tolerable. The second 24 hrs improved the whole time so that the last 12 hours on the open ocean were quite benign. We then got to the shelter of Tierra del Feugo on the ocean and then entered the Beagle Channel towards Puerto Williams so it was calm.



To be honest, I got a bit bored and my cold had morphed into a wicked, hacking cough which didn't endear me to fellow travellers (although the group I hung out with understood. Its still going.

There was a dinner at The Restaurant which featured Australian Cuisine. What were they thinking. The 'Australian meat pie' turned out to be a potato/cottage pie in a small ceramic dish and the 'chicken schnitzel' came as a respectable schnitzel but atop a bowl of spaghetti and tomato. That earned the Hotel Director some feedback from at least 2 of us.

there was the crew talent show which I missed and, unfortunately I also missed the 'crew parade' of as much of the crew as could be spared. Very sorry I missed that.

Around noon on the second day we entered the Beagle Channel and the pilot came aboard soon thereafter

 

[Port Power]

Crew parade. Of note, the Captain came back up the aisle and stood facing his crew while he applauded them.





I didn’t take any photos of the Crew Concert unfortunately, but it was very good. Some very good singers, the band behind them all, and a who,e bunch dancing.

 

[VPS]

We had a 48 hour transit of the Drake Passage - notorious for being rough. The first 24 for us were quite bumpy - 3-4m swells, much like lour Falklands to Sth Georgia stuff, but quite tolerable. The second 24 hrs improved the whole time so that the last 12 hours on the open ocean were quite benign. We then got to the shelter of Tierra del Feugo on the ocean and then entered the Beagle Channel towards Puerto Williams so it was calm.

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To be honest, I got a bit bored and my cold had morphed into a wicked, hacking cough which didn't endear me to fellow travellers (although the group I hung out with understood. Its still going.

There was a dinner at The Restaurant which featured Australian Cuisine. What were they thinking. The 'Australian meat pie' turned out to be a potato/cottage pie in a small ceramic dish and the 'chicken schnitzel' came as a respectable schnitzel but atop a bowl of spaghetti and tomato. That earned the Hotel Director some feedback from at least 2 of us.

there was the crew talent show which I missed and, unfortunately I also missed the 'crew parade' of as much of the crew as could be spared. Very sorry I missed that.

Around noon on the second day we entered the Beagle Channel and the pilot came aboard soon thereafter

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On my Seabourn cruise for Australia day they had Fosters beer - everyone fell about laughing. There were no lamingtons or party pies or sausage rolls. Major fail

 

[Pushka]

On my Seabourn cruise for Australia day they had Fosters beer - everyone fell about laughing. There were no lamingtons or party pies or sausage rolls. Major fail

We had an Australian cooking class on Viking. The Aussies participating were quite disgusted. Entree was goats cheese in filo, Instead of the advertised barramundi they used Mahi Mahi and desert was supposed to be Pavlova. It wasn't. It was a hard meringue shell.

 

[SuePa]

Why do any of the ships do 'Australian' things?
Do they run activities for other countries too?

 

[drron]

Why do any of the ships do 'Australian' things?
Do they run activities for other countries too?

They often do especially for USA guests.

 

[RooFlyer]

Why do any of the ships do 'Australian' things?
Do they run activities for other countries too?

It’s not an bad idea to add a bit of variety to the menu. Besides Australia, we had Norwegian, Chilean and it there must have been some others in there but I didn’t go to this restaurant every night.

 

[SuePa]

It’s not an bad idea to add a bit of variety to the menu. Besides Australia, we had Norwegian, Chilean and it there must have been some others in there but I didn’t go to this restaurant every night.

They often do especially for USA guests.

Ah, ok thanks.
So, countries that claim Antarctic territories, by the look of it. That's a nice idea.
We had a special dinner to commemorate the centenary of Shackelton's expedition, but that was it.

 

[VPS]

Why do any of the ships do 'Australian' things?
Do they run activities for other countries too?

It was Australia Day so they did want to celebrate for us Aussies and it was a nice touch. They also had a Burns night

 

[love_the_life]

There was a dinner at The Restaurant which featured Australian Cuisine. What were they thinking. The 'Australian meat pie' turned out to be a potato/cottage pie in a small ceramic dish and the 'chicken schnitzel' came as a respectable schnitzel but atop a bowl of spaghetti and tomato. That earned the Hotel Director some feedback from at least 2 of us.

On Silver Muse MrLtL had a schnitzel in Atlantide and it came perched on spaghetti as well - no idea why but he reported it was not yummy.

Hope the hacking cough has improved - that seems to be something sticking around from this latest batch of viruses. I had similar back in November and after a few weeks ended up going to GP just to check it hadn't migrated to lungs and morphed into anything (which it hadn't - and it eventually cleared).

 

[RooFlyer]

Speaking of menus. On the second last night (or was it the third) someone at our table ordered a dish with accompanying vegetables. It came out sans vegetables and when being asked why, the wait-person went back to the kitchen and came out with the message. “we’ve run out of vegetables”.

The chap gave the not unreasonable retort that if that’s the case, then, when taking the orders, the waiter should point out that we’re sorry we can’t give you the vegetables with that.

Then someone else on the table pointed out that they got precisely half a brussel sprout as their accompaniment. People who ordered steak got precisely three chips, they were good sized chips, but just three.

 

[drron]

With steaks the usual is 4 fat chips. So they only got dudded one. It is the area where Silversea has gone downhill. As far as I am concerned because of RCL taking over the ordering and supplies for every ship in the fleet. The Main Dining room menu on the wind for a particular night will be the same fleet wide.

 

[RooFlyer]

The Main Dining room menu on the wind for a particular night will be the same fleet wide.

Our presumption re-the veggies was that the local supplier failed to give the vessel their full order. Provisioning a ship or rather the 3 SS ships that use isolated Puerto Williams must be a nightmare.

We all agreed that the meals themselves were excellent throughout the cruise. It was just a few service failures along the way.

 

[RooFlyer]

Puerto Williams and the Silver Cloud in sight. We'll anchor for a while and refuel until she departs and warp into the dock about 10pm.



Not sure what is going on here - any suggestions? At a guess I'd say waste to be taken away by barge.



The airport is very close - about 10 min drive. Horses and cows range free around the town. Its about 3pm now, so the plane has probably brought some of the new Clouds in.



Puerto Williams is on the island of Navarino, and the mountains behind are called 'the teeth of Navarino'. Bags over the side of the ship now empty.



Later in the afternoon, the refueler bunker ship sidled along side and drifted in







That evening, a farewell to the Expedition Crew. I didn't think I met most of them. There are admin people, lecturers and safety bods amongst them.



This navigational chart, signed by the captain and others and with art work by one of the wait-staff was auction off for the Crew Welfare Fund. Went to a Singaporean for US$2k.