first harbour day of 2008 Antarctic

Just a short note on how things are going down here:

I have just returned from an 18-day trip to the Falklands (Carcass & Saunders Is.), South Georgia, and the Antarctic Peninsula on the Akademik Sergey Vavilov (see previous posts for pictures). The ship is incredibly stable and comfortable even in fairly bad weather, and so the trip was a breeze. Also, I have been working with the largest shipboard staff team yet, 20 strong! Considering that we had around 95 passengers, the staff-passenger ratio was excellent and we all had a great time.

Another new thing for me is the addition of a videographer on the staff, which happens to be my cabin mate. Unfortunately, that means that our desk is overflowing with video gear, a 24-inch iMac, tripds, DVD covers everywhere... and from time to time the cabin becomes a recording studio for voice-overs!

But the work he has done is incredible, I managed to catch a glimpse of the 40-minute high-def video that he shot, edited, sound-edited and presented, all during the voyage... he did not get too much sleep, or when he did you could see the impressions of the keyboard on his forehead... ;-)

In a few hours I am off for another voyage on the Vavilov, back in port on February 6. Hopefully, next time I get shore leave I remember to bring the CD with the images of the voyage, so I can upload some on the website. For now, this text will have to suffice.

Hurtigruten vessel "Fram" loses power, hits iceberg

It seems that the string of news about Antarctic shipping accidents is far from over:

A few days ago, Hurtigruten's newest vessel in the fleet, the FRAM has had an incident where it lost engine power for a period of 30 minutes during which the vessel drifted just past a skerry and scratched along an iceberg. The ship is currently sitting at anchorage off Ushuaia and has cancelled the trip they should have been commencing on January 02.

Antarctic season 2008 - here I come

In a few days I will be off to Buenos Aires and Ushuaia to rejoin the Adventure Fleet vessel "Akademik Sergey Vavilov". It will be a long season again - I expect to be home in the first week of April - but I have managed to put in a few days of "shore leave" in February.



This season is going to be as varied and complicated as it could be - 6 trips on 5 ships - so there should be plenty of stuff to write home about. In previous years I could have cracked a cheap joke about having no home and thus being forced to write to "the internet" but alas, that ship has sailed ;-)

Allow me to take a moment and make a quick list of 2007:

• moved into new enormous apartment with my girl (January)
• went on a spontaneous road trip around Argentina (March)
• got all the paperwork done & finalized wedding plans (May)
• finally joined a cruise around Greenland & Iceland (August)
• got married, had honeymoon in the mountains (September)
• finished another PhD article, got a nice job offer (November)
• got an even nicer job offer, submitted the article (December)

It is always weird to leave home and head out to the ships for weeks and months, but this time it might be the weirdest yet. Wish me luck and check out this blog or the "recent pictures" section in the coming weeks!