MS National Geographic Explorer
Booth Island
Sunday, January 17, 2010

    We spent the night cruising north towards the southern entrance of the Lemaire Channel – our destination: Booth Island. Booth Island is near Pleneau Island, where I visited last January. Booth is primarily home to gentoo penguins, but there are also small groups of adelie and chinstraps. The area around Booth, Peterman, and Pleneau Islands tends to capture small to medium sized icebergs and can make for an impressive Zodiac ride. Today, however, they had to be observed from afar because of increasing winds.

    We did take a Zodiac cruise along the shoreline of Booth Island. The ice and snow on Booth are pigmented with green and pink algae – the Antarctic equivalent of a forest. A leopard seal was gracefully swimming in the sea just offshore. Its serpentine appearance sinous swimming style is very destintive. The staff divers were in the water and were visited by the leopard seal. They were able to capture underwater video of it swimming and they shared this during evening recap.

    We also made Zodiac landings on Booth Island to visit the Penguin colonies. The wind continued to increase minute by minute and just standing up was a challenge; not to mention trying to navigate over the rocks made slick as glass by water, mud, and penguin guano. On the ridgeline of one hill, I was standing on the rocks trying to maintain my balance and get some photographs, when I suddenly realized that I was moving. The wind by this time was up to about 40 knots, gusting to over 50 knots, and there wasn’t enough friction to prevent me from wind sailing over the slick rocky surface.

    Photographing on the ridge was hopeless, so I carefully made my way down the slope across the rocks, across the skree, over the snow, and down near the shore. I found a rock near a couple of nesting gentoos and planting my bottom securely upon it. After a few shots, I just packed my camera back into a dry-sack and dedicated myself as another pair of helping hands getting fellow passengers off the rocks and into the Zodiacs.

    The ship departed Booth and made the big turn into the Lemaire Channel. Visibility was not very good and the channel was nearly filled with ice. The channel acts as a venturi for the wind and the ship was driving into a 60-70 knot headwind. Captain Kruess was at the helm and it was interesting to watch from the bridge as he steered the ship around and through the ice.

    As the day ended, we continued to cruise north through the channels and straits of the Antarctic Peninsula. About 3:00 am, we made a sharp turn to port and headed out into the Drake Passage on our way to Cape Horn and eventually Ushuaia. Tomorrow will be a sea day and everyone’s thoughts are on what the seas in the Drake will be like for our return voyage.