02 February 2010; At sea, sailing south.

Chile is the longest and narrowest country in the world and that “longest” part we are now noticing ourselves. For the last 24 hours we have been sailing down the coast on an almost direct southerly course just outside the 12 mile zone so we can keep the casino open. Even if we did not have a casino, this would be the average distance as well, as occasionally the Chilean coast has a cape or peninsula jutting out of the coast surrounded by reefs and pinnacle rocks, so it makes sense to keep a good distance. The weather took a turn for the worse this morning by completely clouding over which dropped the average temperatures considerably. The frontal system lying over Robinson Crusoe Island is pushing these clouds further up North. Also the swells are more pronounced than yesterday and the ship has been pitching gently all day long.

In the mean time we are coming closer and closer to Antarctica and for that we have a lot of preparations to do. One of the items that might not be so obvious is that the company requires all crew to go through an environmental training to create more understanding about this pristine area and also to know what is required to be allowed to go there. For that the company has developed a computer based course which all have to complete and it ends with a summary test with Q&A. It covers subjects as not throwing anything overboard, what sort of wild life is out there and what all crew has to pay attention to while we are sailing in Antarctic waters. This ties in with the latest restrictions that will be placed upon us when we are there.

The deck department has to follow, or refresh, another course and that is the whale watching course. Several sorts of whales are common to the area and each species has different characteristics and behavior. The humpback whale dives in a different way than a pilot whale. Then we have the Southern Right Whales who are the most difficult to deal with as they tend to be completely oblivious to the outside world and just keep doing what ever it is that they are doing. To deal with whales we have developed a whole protocol that involves slowing down, steering away or stopping the ship completely if needed. We then wait until the whales have moved on before we continue our journey. The most crucial part of all of this is the timely spotting of a whale, really as early as possible and to recognize what sort of whale it is so that we can try to interpret its behavior and maybe predict its most likely next move.

By the time that we near Antarctica all crew should have a heightened awareness about the area. Guests will receive a lot of similar information and for that reason we will have an “expedition leader” onboard who will sail with us from Valparaiso to Port Stanley and part of that job is to help all of us to better understand what we see and what the context is of the whole environment in which are suddenly sailing. For those of you who have been to Glacier Bay in Alaska, in a way it is similar, only the area is much larger and the ice cubes much bigger.

For most of the day we gently pitched our way south towards but it was not intrusive. Coquimbo is our next port of call about 200 steaming miles north of Valparaiso and we will be at the pilot station at 0700 hrs. By evening the swells started to abate and that might mean that I will be lucky tomorrow and not have any swell alongside the dock. I finished my painting hanging today in the new section of the ship and final cleaning is in progress. Tomorrow the bedding will go in and the furniture placed and unless something unforeseen happens we will be ready for the new guests in Valparaiso.

Tomorrow it will be an overcast day with temperatures in the low sixties. Good touring weather but the tropics are definitely behind us.