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Home* Triplogs with photo galleriesAntarctic blog → Ushua­ia & Bea­gle Chan­nel

Ushua­ia & Bea­gle Chan­nel

Unbe­lie­va­ble how much 152 peo­p­le are sup­po­sed to eat within 31 days. Well bey­ond a dozen of us nee­ded an inten­se cou­ple of hours to car­ry all tho­se boxes with things from fro­zen fish to big melons up the gang­way and down the stairs into the various free­zers and holds. Which seems to be as effi­ci­ent as loa­ding a coal freigh­ter with buckets. But good to keep us fit! And good to see that all the fish boxes have got the MSC stamp which is sup­po­sed to gua­ran­tee sus­tainable fishing. Good thing.

We would have been fas­ter if Argen­ti­ne cus­toms had not taken hours to stamp the papers for the last few boxes of vege­ta­bles. And at the same time, fuel bun­ke­ring was going on. Smo­king on and near the ship is obvious­ly strict­ly for­bidden then. Fun­ny to watch Argen­ti­ne offi­ci­al rela­xing with a ciga­ret­te while lea­ning against the fuel pump. I guess the die­sel knows it’s offi­ci­als who are smo­king so it doesn’t inci­ne­ra­te.

The­re isn’t much left befo­re we real­ly start, so I refrain from my usu­al last walk to one of Ushuaia’s many love­ly cafés and rather get orga­ni­zed in the cabin that I will share with Dmi­t­ri („Dima“), a fel­low team mem­ber, Rus­si­an mari­ne bio­lo­gist who lives in Seat­tle and Japan. Think about that. But within the con­text of this staff team, it even isn’t too unu­su­al, the­re are many gre­at cha­rac­ters and extre­me­ly expe­ri­en­ced peo­p­le, a good gang. Peo­p­le like Don Mac­Fad­zi­en, our fearless expe­di­ti­on lea­der, who does pro­ba­b­ly not even know any­mo­re how many times he has been to the Ross Sea. Or Jim May­er, who used to work for the Bri­tish Ant­ar­c­tic Sur­vey, blo­wing things up in Ant­ar­c­ti­ca. Then he deci­ded that was too much noi­se and joi­n­ed the tou­rist indus­try. Well known names in the­se lati­tu­des.

We spend the after­noon with the usu­al hec­tic of the first day, wel­co­ming 93 pas­sen­gers, put­ting them and their lug­ga­ge into their cab­ins, going through the man­da­to­ry life­boat drill – may we never do it again! – and having a toast with our Chi­lean Cap­tain Ernes­to Bar­ría, ano­ther well-known cha­rac­ter on this ship in the Arc­tic and Ant­ar­c­tic. At the same time, the Bea­gle Chan­nel is gli­ding past us in slight drizz­le. We drop anchor for a while at Puer­to Wil­liams to get the 3 Chi­lean heli­c­op­ters on board (yes, 3, last time we had only 2, but we are also more peo­p­le now). Good to see fri­ends among­st the heli­c­op­ter crews, very expe­ri­en­ced peo­p­le also on this side of the ope­ra­ti­on.

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last modification: 2015-01-12 · copyright: Rolf Stange
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