MS National Geographic Explorer
Palmer Station and Paradise Bay
Thursday, January 14, 2010

    We expected to wake up this morning to very windy conditions. All the satellite images and weather forecasts were saying this to us, but the morning was quite pretty with a little 10-knot wind. The manager of Palmer Station, Rebecca Shoop, visited the ship and presented a short introduction to the station and the mission of NFS in Antarctica.

    We then split into three groups; one would be on ship while a second visited a small island next to Anvers Island (where Palmer Station is situated) and a third group visited the station via Zodiac. I was in the first group to visit the station. They gave a nice short tour of the station, including the gift shop that sold Palmer Station logo clothing, and culminating in the cafeteria where they had coffee, brownies, and staff to meet. While we were on the station, the forecast winds began to pick up and were really starting to blow as I was ferried back to the ship. The wind and chop was so intense that we were unable to approach the port side of ship and had to back off and try for the starboard side. That, too, was pretty wild, but we made it. Not surprisingly, I didn’t make it over to little Torgersen Island. The captain recalled everyone.

    Once everyone was back aboard ship, we weighed anchor and headed out away from Anvers Island. The first officer, Ben, was on the radio contacting other ships and stations up and down the Antarctic Peninsula to get the current weather conditions. Everyone, from north in the Antarctic Sound to south below the Lemaire Channel was reporting essentially the same conditions – 40 to 50 knot winds. All the ships were heading for sheltered bays. Our destination was decided to be Paradise Bay, a fairly large area, fortunately, since we would share it with two other ships. We were able to slowly cruise around to see the scenery and the nesting blue-eyed shags in the cliffs. The captain and crew continued to slowly cruise around the bay all night so that we could keep the stabilizers deployed during the “night”, also known as twilight.

    Our destination for tomorrow is still up in the air. It will depend on the wind and weather, as does every day’s plans.