Coming soon to a forum near you, Ross Sea Expedition onboard The World

[love_the_life]

So, were you impacted by the lost anchor delay?

 

[bPeteb]

So, were you impacted by the lost anchor delay?

We recovered it overnight (we think).

It was of course all over the news down here. We found out about it when we meet some friends from the ship on Saturday night.

We sailed on time last night, we'll a bit early actually. Captain Dag came over the tannoy and announced we were heading to Port Arthur where we'd meet a salvage tug that had located the anchor chain but couldn't dislodge it. The aim was to re-attach our anchorless chain to the chain that had been recovered and use the ship's winch to recover it.

We were having dinner in East when we sailed into Port Arthur past Cape Pillar - spectacular! By the time we had finished dinner we were nearing the salvage tug and went down to the apartment to watch the proceedings. Amazing watching this huge tug backing under the bow of the ship and ropes and cables being passed between it and our fast rescue boat.

Hours later we heard the anchor chain coming up and can only presume it was recovered as the next time I woke was by the sound and motion of us hitting a large swell and some books toppling over.

We're now well under way. Light winds but 5-6m sells coming from the west so we have quite the roll on. Glad our apartment is on 6. It would be pretty hairy up on 11. We'll have dinner in Marina tonight. Down on 5

Expedition briefing in an hour and a half. First photography workshop after that. Welcome coughtail party at six. Might try and get some work done at some point in between.

 

[love_the_life]

Sounds like it's going to be a wonderful experience - green, green, green with envy :mrgreen:

 

[bPeteb]

Although we're not 'due' to lose internet until Monday, the internet is already getting mighty slow, so much so that I had to sign off from work (boo hooray) this morning. The intrusive security-ware on my laptop brought productivity to a halt and I couldn't risk software updates, that I couldn't control, suckling up bandwidth.

I managed to get a few days of posts and pictures uploaded to my travelpod blog. The link to the first post is Aussiepanda's Travel Blog: Brisbane, Australia - January 14, 2017

A quick summary of the trip so far -
Flight to Melbourne from Brisbane delayed nearly an hour due to bag drop spitting bags out after it had swallowed them! We hoped our's weren't affected.
Our bid for an upgrade on the short Melbourne - Hobart hop was accepted (minimum points of 3000 each plus $80 each). Enjoyed some nice bubbles in the Melbourne J lounge to toast our wonderful friend for offering us this amazing opportunity.
Loved our little 717 J jaunt. Surprised to get a full meal - roast pork, veg, cheesecake washed down by a nice Shaw and Smith sav blanc all done in an hour.
Bags came out just after the fur seal. All three!
Shuttle dropped us straight outside Old Woolstore.
Visited Mawson's Hut Replica Museum - excellent.
Excellent dinner at Smolt followed by fantastic coughtails at South Seas coughtail Bar.
Welcomed back onto The World like returning family.
Sailed early.
Recovered anchor.
Seas nowhere near as bad as anyone was expecting.
Fantastic lectures.
Photography workshops with three National Geo photographers
Four brilliant dinners accompanied by some amazing wines
Saw our first snow flurry from our balcony. It blew past in minutes
About to cross the Antarctic Circle
Amazing!

 

[love_the_life]

Sigh .......

 

[lovetravellingoz]

Sigh .......

Indeed.

Out of curiosity.. ms The World - Itinerary Schedule, Current Position | CruiseMapper

[h=3]The World ship prices - apartment cost, rentals, fees[/h][FONT=&quot]First of all, this is a modern big cruise ship you can actually live on. Well, you and me probably not, but celebrities like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Madonna, for example, own suites on it. So if you can afford the below apartment prices, you'll buy yourself the pleasure to enjoy a celebrity company - once and awhile. The choice includes 165 top-luxury apartments, ranging in category from studios to 3-bedroom suites.[/FONT]

• Studio cost - US$600,000 (initially were sold at $90,000).
• Two Bed (Ocean Residence) apartment cost - US$2,950,000
• ms The World Suites cost - only US$13,500,000 (initially sold at $6 mill).
• Short-term rentals - you can rent some of The World's cruise apartments (depending on category) from ~$550 for a studio apartment (per person per night, min for 5 days) to suite rentals - from ~$20,000 a month. Some of the residences are also available for rent - at US$2100 a day. Discounts are available for repeat guests.
• The World ship's apartments sizes vary from 1350 ft2 (125 m2) to 3000 ft2 (280 m2) "cruise mansions".

[FONT=&quot]If you fantasy about becoming an apartment owner on ms The World, you should also know that ship service fees (depending on property) start from US$60,000 to US$270,000 a year. These cover crew, fuel, maintenance, port charges, meal allowance. US$8 million is the entry fee. This amount of money buys you a lease expiring in the distant 2052. As to the maintenance fees mentioned above - they are ~5-6% of the apartment's sale price. As to the ship's occupancy - it rarely goes above 200 passengers.[/FONT]

 

[bPeteb]

A lot of that info is not right. No rentals of any kind except to guests or family of residents or potential buyers. By this I mean that there's noone to contact to rent. There are four time share apartments owned by a group called Exclusive Resorts. They run a lottery for access to the apartments. Service fee is less for single occupancy. Studios start at less than 35 square metres. Walk in robe, marble bathroom with full size tub and walk in shower, king bed and sofa. The two bed apartments are the 125 quoted. There are double and triple studios before you get to a two bed. We have 118, 50/50 resident/guest on the expedition. We had under 90 when we sailed from the Cook Islands on or first trip. Amazed internet is still working. Just saw first iceberg. We are at 63 S. Due to start cruise by Balleny Islands in about three hours.

 

[love_the_life]

Icebegs are exciting - just don't do a Titanic!

 

[bPeteb]

Wasn't able to go ashore yesterday at Cape Adare due to large amount of ice against the beach. Instead we spent over an hour in zodiacs cruising close to shore amongst the adele penguins. Watched a crowd of skuas having dinner. Spectacular clear, windless day.

We were out on the zodiacs again last night at midnight further down the coast at Cape Roget.

Neither of our laptops can open a browser but miraculously phones and ipad fine. Photos of course are on the laptop. You'll have to wait for a couple of weeks for them.

I've even been sneaking some pics of some of our meals but must admit I feel a bit awkward taking food photos in the restaurants.

Lecture series amazing. Our photographers fantastic.

Supposed to scenic cruise Cape Hallett this morning but pack ice too close in so looks like we're heading straight to Coulman Island. Hoping for fast ice and emperors.

Everything we do is weather and ice dependant.

Woken this morning by the sounds of us crashing through some broken pack ice. The luxury of an ice strengthened hull.

 

[bPeteb]

Here we are waiting for the wind to die down a bit so we can go and break the record of furthest south for a private 'yacht'. The Packer's Arctic P held it then a 67' ketch went a to 78o 43.926'. We are at 43.80 and will start into the bay in 40 minutes. If wind continues to drop is also polar plunge day!

Sadly we didn't make it into McMurdo. The ice that had cleared the last three years is still not budging.

We have been on the continent twice though in Terra Nova Bay where we visited Mario Zucchelli Station, went sea kayaking then went for a hike for about 90 minutes.

What an incredible experience it has been, so far

 

[love_the_life]

For those who have been looking for posts, BPB had updated his travel pod blog with some truly amazing photos:
Aussiepanda's Travel Blog: Brisbane, Australia - January 14, 2017

 

[bPeteb]

We're back. What a trip. Will start getting posts and pics up in the next couple of days.

bpb

 

[bPeteb]

And away we go. I'm being reeeally lazy this time and just copying the word doc that I wrote along the way.

Brisbane Saturday Jan 14
I don't know about you, but I like to spend a long time planning and organising a holiday. When we went to Greenland we spent months getting the gear together and booking hotels and flights and trains and cars. It's all part of the excitement. We only found out about this trip seven weeks to the day before the ship was due to sail.

When we got that amazing message asking if we were able to go, we were watching Continent 7, a new documentary series centred around the occupants of Scott Base, NZ's Antarctic base in the Ross Dependency. Talk about coincidence. Apart from flights to Hobart and home from Christchurch and a night in Hobart there was nothing else to organise. We had pretty much all the gear after going to Greenland. Some more thick socks, Uniqlo puffer jackets, Kathmandu merino neck gaiters and a new dry bag day pack and we're set.

So here we are, the weekend of departure has arrived and the most surreal seven weeks either of us has ever spent reaches an end. We are really going to Antarctica!



We took our first Uber out to the airport and it was at least a third cheaper than a taxi. Ridiculous. Chaos at Qantas drop off that got even more chaotic not long after we walked away - bags started coming out instead of going in! Luckily, not ours.

The flight was delayed by nearly an hour due to the bag issue and also us waiting for a couple of people who were coming off the flight from LA (they didn't make it).

Qantas don't fly direct from Brisbane to Hobart, instead going via Sydney or Melbourne. We chose Melbourne. We'd bid for an upgrade to business and with minimal points and a few extra bucks our bid was accepted.

We plopped ourselves down in the corner of the business lounge and with bubbles in hand toasted our friend who had made this amazing opportunity available to us.



I'd never flown in a Boeing 717 but remember DC-9s and 727s well (I'm very old!). A 717 is actually just the Boeing version of the DC-9 after Boeing bought McDonnell Douglas.

What a cool little plane! In business at least, miles of room. Each seat came with an ipad and headphones but neither of us bothered. The flight was only an hour and a quarter.



Amazingly in that time we had a full lunch - roast pork and veg and a cheesecake, washed down with some quite decent Sav Blanc!



We even arrived early!

 

[bPeteb]

Hobart Saturday January 14
We caught the shuttle into town and were dropped right outside the door of our digs for the night – The Old Woolstore Apartments The Old Woolstore Apartment Hotel Hobart – chosen specifically because it was only a couple of blocks walk to where the ship was berthed.



Dropped our gear and went for a wander.



Although we’d planned to visit the following morning, we decided to go into the Mawson’s Hut Replica Museum Mawson's Huts Replica Museum | Hobart, Australia . WOW! What an amazing building and what an eye opener. Although I’ve just read a biography of Amundsen and Scott, seeing inside one of these small timber buildings puts what I’ve read into perspective.



What brave and crazy men they were.

We joined some friends and residents from the ship for drinks at a great pub – the New Sydney The New Sydney – and were joined by a uni friend of mine who we were going out to dinner with.

Dinner was at Smolt About Smolt -Smolt Restaurant


Beef tartare

Excellent meal and terrific service. I would have been happy to go just the gorgeous Scandi-modern interior. We’d eaten at their sister restaurant Frank last year when we came down for Dark mof_. Equally excellent.

We finished at the coolest little hole in the wall bar – South Seas coughtail Lounge.



It was brilliant, and is truly not far off being a hole in the wall. There will be a sign beside the bamboo decorated door telling you if they are full (it seats less than 30). If you knock they’ll let you know how long you could expect to wait. The coughtails are mainly rum based although there’s quite a few that aren’t. Neither of us are rum drinkers and the couple that we had (that’s all you’d need) were delicious!!

It was a fab first day and night.

 

[bPeteb]

Lots of the drinks served in crazy ceramic beakers



Some of the drinks on offer



The World from Constitution Dock

 

[bPeteb]

Sailing day Sunday January 15
A comfy bed and a quiet room equalled a pretty good night’s sleep. The coughtails played no part at all! We ate a leisurely breakfast and decided to drop our bags off at the ship earlier than we’d advised. Was it a problem? Of course not.

Stepping back on board The World was like coming home after a long time away.



Many of the crew have been on the ship for years and we were greeted with “welcome back” by the staff who recognised us. The welcome on board champagne and canape is a beautiful touch. We were given all the paperwork and there were a few things that we needed to do during the afternoon before sailing – immigration and tax claim, mandatory lifeboat drill – so we dumped what we didn’t need in the apartment and headed back ashore.

Stupid me forgot that Salamanca Markets are only on Saturday so we wandered up to the Hobart Farmers Market in Bathurst Street (right outside the New Sydney Hotel!). Bought some Tassie cheeses and granola to get us started. We’ll buy more supplies as needed from Fredy’s Deli.

We decided we might as well go back to the ship and unpack so that’s what we did. At 3 we went down and completed the immigration formalities and completed the TRS claim to get the gst back on our new Sony action cam FDR-X3000 4K Action Cam with Wi-Fi & GPS | FDR-X3000 / FDR-X3000R | Sony AU

The Golden Princess had been in port overnight – what an ugly monstrosity – and it sailed about half an hour before we dropped our lines (15 minutes early) and set sail from Antarctica.



As we slipped away from Macquarie Wharf



Captain Dag came over the public address system to let us know that we were actually sailing for Port Arthur to recover our lost anchor. In conversation the previous night Al had been told that the ship had lost one of its bow anchors when they had visited Port Arthur during the previous week. A strong wind had come up and from what he was told the chain literally snapped. Captain Dag told us that the salvage company that had been engaged had located the anchor and considerable length of chain in the deep mud of the bay. The tugs winches had not been powerful enough to raise the anchor. The intent was to re-join our anchor-less chain with the found chain and winch the anchor back into its rightful place on the bow of the ship.



We were having dinner in East when we sailed in past Port Pillar and up to Port Arthur where we arrived at about 9pm.

Dinner at East. Excellent dinner of soft shell crab and tuna sashimi followed by Goan fish curry and finishing with a tasting plate of tiny desserts.

 

[bPeteb]

The World uses EYOS Expeditions to run it's expeditions. The ship completed a Borneo Expedition before arriving into Australia and after our trip to the Ross Sea and a visit to NZ and Norfolk Island, EYOS will be guiding the ship through Melanesia on a three week expedition.

Here's links to EYOS and the list of the expedition team that we had on board.

EYOS Expeditions - www.[B]eyos[/B]-expeditions.com/

Rob McCallum – Expedition Leader – co-owner EYOS Expeditions www.[B]eyos[/B]-expeditions.com/about/team/rob-mccallum
Captain Uli Demel. – Ice Captain Captain Uli Demel
Dr Katja Riedel – Glaciologist
Dr Kim Crosbie – Naturalist but also on board as an observer as Executive Director of the secretariat of the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators (IAATO)
Rob Suisted – Naturalist/Photographer www.[B]robsuisted[/B]photography.co.nz/
Graeme Ayres – Naturalist
Jessica Farrer – Naturalist
Dr Margaret Bradshaw – Geologist
Rod Ledingham – Naturalist
Peter McCarthy – Historian
Dr John French - Logistics (Atmospheric Physicist)
Mick Davidson - Logistics
Rex Hendry - Logistics
Scott Edgerton - Kayak master
Sisse Brimberg - Guest Photographer - www.nationalgeographic.com/contributors/b/photographer-sisse-brimberg/
Uri Golman - Guest Photographer www.urigolman.com
Helle Olsen - Guest Photographer www.helleolsen.com
Dr Andrew Peacock - Expedition Physician (on top of the ship's medical staff)/Photographer
Eric Wehrmeister – Videographer

 

[bPeteb]

Southern Ocean Monday January 16
We are well out into the Southern Ocean when we open our eyes. There was some serious rolling during the night and both of us decided we’d maybe start the trip with a Kwell each to get our sea legs working. Wise decision as it was pretty rough most of the day.

What we did today –
We both worked most of the day between lectures etc. Internet is surprisingly good.



Expedition Welcome Briefing – meet the expedition team and a synopsis of what we hope to do once we arrive at the Ross Sea. Ice maps show a remarkable break-up of the pack ice clearing our way into the Ross Sea.

Introductory Photo Workshop – an intro to the three Danish photographers who will be helping us get the best photos we possibly can once we reach Antarctica. All work for National Geographic, one for close to 30 years.

Lecture by Dr Kim Crosbie – An Introduction to the Antarctic – tourism-centred lecture. Impacts of tourism, numbers, peninsula v the rest of the continent

Expedition Welcome coughtails – caught up with a few of the residents who we had met previously and some of the expedition crew including Rod Ledingham

Dinner at Marina – steak – 6oz fillet and 6oz cap. Amazingly good. Greek red wine. Perfect.

Tuesday January 17
Another fairly rolly night. One giant roll had Al grab an extra pillow to wedge him in the bed to stop him rolling out. Books toppled over and the wardrobe door slammed shut.

Another one Kwell day but feeling much more stable.



We both worked most of the day between lectures etc. Internet is surprisingly good.

Lecture by Dr Margaret Bradshaw – The Volcanic History of the Ross Sea

Photo Workshop – Getting to know your camera – Uri Golman and Helle Olsen www.helleolsen.com

Lecture by Dr Katja Riedel – Introduction to Antarctica (Part 2) – geography, climate, biology, politics – great lecture! A German who now lives in NZ. We loved Katje!

Photo Workshop – Photographing Penguins – Sisse Brimberg – excellent. Love Sisse’s dry sense of humour. Sisse has worked for National Geographic, or ‘TheGeographic’ as Sisse called it for I’m sure over 30 years now

Dinner at Portraits Bistro. Normally Portraits is formal – tux or dark suit with tie. Bistro is dress down night but still not casual. We chose to wear jackets, as did most other male guests. Beautiful French inspired meal of I have no idea what! Dessert trolley was a bit underwhelming. We might (!) give it a miss next time.

I would love to have taken photos of every meal we had as they are so beautifully presented (and so very, very good). I got a couple of snaps but 1. Al hates me doing it, anywhere, and 2. on the ship I felt like a dork doing it the couple of times that I did.

Wednesday January 18
Still rolling at night but better than the previous two nights.

Seas 2.5-4 metres. Position at 08:30 54 degrees 6 minutes South 154 degrees 53 minutes East

Reached a high of 7C as we cross the Antarctic Convergence.



We both worked most of the day between lectures etc but internet is slowing.

Mandatory Zodiac and IAATO briefing

Mandatory decontamination – anything we are wearing or taking ashore had to be inspected and vacuumed. Amazing to find some small seeds in the hems of the waterproof pants that I’d worn on the Inca Trail! More stuff caught in the Velcro of the ski pants we’d last worn in Greenland.

Photo Workshop – a sit down with the three photographers to talk about our own cameras – it went a bit haywire. More people turned up than they expected and somehow we got missed. We’ll have another go tomorrow.

Lecture by Rob Suisted – Whales and Dolphins of the Southern Ocean. The stream the lectures being held in Colosseo on the TV so we watched as we tried to worked. Internet was very slow in the afternoon.

Dinner at Tides. Tides is more Mediterranean fare. My starter of Tuna tartare was one of the best dishes I’ve ever eaten. I even got my phone out to take a picture.



It was spectacular. Al loved his buffalo mozzarella. They make it on the ship!! Both had small size rabbit ragu tagliatelle. Perfect little serving sizes in Tides.

Finished watching a documentary on Shackleton’s journey. Amazing.

For drron

 

[bPeteb]

Thursday January 19
Lots of new creaking and groaning as we head into the seas and not across them. One above the bed that I eventually solved by sticking a coaster between some of the roof panels!

Seas 2.5-4 metres. Position at 7:30AM 58 degrees 38 minutes South 156 degrees 53 minutes East. Outside temp 2 degrees. Wind up to 39 knots

Another sea day. I picked up where I left off with Little Tree. It really is a beautiful book.


The deserted pool deck

Lecture by Dr Margaret Bradshaw – The Longest Mountain Range – about the Transantarctic Mountain Range.

Photo workshop with Helle Olsen – composition. Lots of this we knew but you always learn something.

Photo workshop with Uri - One-on-One. This was fantastic. We booked a timeslot to talk with Uri. We confess that we usually have our cameras set on Auto. We don’t want our pictures in books. They’re for us and a few get uploaded to our blog. He’s asked us to try and keep our cameras on Aperture Priority and if we need a hand when we’re onshore he’ll give us some more pointers. Such a nice guy.

The three Danes are worlds apart from the last photographer we had on board. With him it was his way or the highway. These three are all about taking some pictures then putting your camera away and absorbing the moment. Photography is fun. Enjoy it!

Lecture by Dr Kim Crosbie – Flying Underwater. The Life and Loves of an Antarctic Penguin. Hilarious! We ending up spending quite a bit of time with Km including taking her to dinner. What a brilliant person!

Photo workshop with Sisse Brimberg – visual narrative. Telling a story with the pictures that we take.

Expedition Briefing – the first of our nightly expedition briefings. Rob talked about his worry as the pack ice in the Ross Sea looked like it wasn’t going to clear and then how over the two weeks before we sailed it was blown away. Four little recaps by other expedition team members.

Dinner at East again. Had a sushi set than came in a boat! There is a sushi chef in the restaurant who makes all the sushi fresh to order. It was fantastic. I was more careful with the wasabi!

Friday January 20
Seas 4-6 metres. Position at 09:00AM 63 degrees 36 minutes S 160 degrees 18 minutes E Outside temp 1 degree.

We are now inside the '60 degree' Antarctic Circle. To celebrate we opened some champagne and had some of the cheese we bought in Hobart.



Lecture by Rod Ledingham – An Introduction to Cape Adare. Love Rod’s droll delivery! Rod talked about the first landings on Cape Adare by Carsten Borchgrevink and then Scott’s Northern Party. As I’m typing the weather outside is a bit grim and we’ve slowed to let the system clear away from the Cape so that we can hopefully make our first landing tomorrow.

We’ve been accompanied by small groups of birds for the most of the way. We saw some larger and then smaller albatrosses initially. They disappeared and we now have what we’ve found out to be petrels swooping along in the waves created by the ship. We have spent way too long trying to get a decent shot of these fast-moving birds. We managed to get a couple of birds in focus.


A petrel of some kind

Photo workshop with Uri – learning about Adobe Lightroom. We’ve got a version of Lightroom on our pc at home. Always been a bit scared of using it but it’s nowhere near as complicated as I thought.

We called in to the gym to make sure that they’d received our registration for kayaking. Suzanne explained that it would slightly different to Greenland. There would be a single long list. At the top would be residents then guests who had registered by email, as we had done, then those who registered on the ship. They would work their way through the list and if people decided once was enough you’d progress up the list if there was a second opportunity. Fantastic!!

Lecture by Dr Katja Riedel – Icy Antarctica. From snow flake to glacier to ice sheet. SUPER interesting. As the lecture was in question phase they announced the first iceberg had been spotted ahead.

Raced back to the apartment and suited up.

We’d been out in the morning and it was cold so we knew that we needed more layers. We joined the throng up on deck 12 and snapped away as an iceberg that looked like a mesa from Death Valley floated past.


Not as exciting as we thought it might be...



To be honest, except for the fact that it was in brilliant sunshine for a while, it was a bit of an anti-climax. We saw SO many icebergs in Greenland so this single berg was a bit underwhelming. I’m typing this on Saturday morning and there’s a whole lot more out there and it’s a lot more exciting. Plus the fact it’s a whole lot colder. I can feel the cold coming through the sliding glass door!

We lost track of time and raced down and had dinner at Fredy’s. We got there 10 minutes before closely and didn’t realise before they started packing up around us. We apologised profusely to Henry as we left.

 

[bPeteb]

20th continued...

Captain Dag has a 18:00 recap on the day’s progress and expected conditions for the next 24 hours. Tonight he announced that we would be arriving at the northern most of the Balleny Islands just after 10pm and just after 10 he made the announcement that they were now in sight. We suited up as quick as we could, putting on even more layers than the afternoon, and went out on the boat deck just along from the apartment to be greeted by the most amazing sight.



We saw lots of ice/snow-capped peaks in Greenland but nothing like this island. Sheer cliffs capped with a huge build-up of ice and snow.







We stood outside for as long as we could stand it. It was a good exercise in working out what was and wasn’t enough clothing when we go outside. Minimum two pairs of gloves would be essential from now on.