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Point of View: Antarctic Cruises

By: Watkins Trinas

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Two nautical charts are spread out on the nautical table. According to both charts, these waters had not been surveyed. Our captain maintains a safe course using depth soundings. He may be a seasoned Antarctic sailor, but he?s never sailed this channel before today.

First it turns to dusk, then a heavy snow starts to fall; it is difficult to see. The bridge windows start to accumulate the large flakes and we have difficulty seeing the icebergs ahead. The ship?s radar clearly illustrates each floating barrier. The screen is filled with various blobs of oranges, signifying icebergs. The monitor shows the channel nearly blocked by one gigantic orange blob. According to the scale, it is three kilometers away.

The captain issues a quiet command as we near the one kilometer mark. With a flick of the wheel, the helmsman steers the ship away from the danger. Through the falling snow and deep fog, we glimpse a tabular iceberg. This kind of berg can only be seen in the southern ocean. The sides go one hundred feet straight up and the top is flat and extremely wide.

Antarctica has amazed me again. Our goal was the Antarctic Circle at the bottom of the globe, and our vehicle was a polar class cruise vessel. Having passed many unsettled and unoccupied areas of the planet, we are nearly there. Seventy-nine years after having been first sighted in 1820, a human spent an entire winter on Antarctica for the first time. Explorers searching for the southern pole struggled and scientists were the next to approach Antarctica. Only very rich tourists could visit Antarctica until very recent times. With the extreme drop of costs, you can visit this continent for about as much as you could a Caribbean island.

Some compare Antarctica to the shape of a manta ray with a curved tail. Five hundred miles of ocean sit between South America and the very end of that curved tail. This area of water is known as Drakes Passage and sports some of the worst seas on the planet. This area, also known as ?the Slobbering Jaws of Hell? makes you pay to get to Antarctica. One of the passengers told us all to stow everything and secure the latches on the cabin portholes before they went to bed.

The open ocean welcomed us after we left the Beagle Channel. We?d passed through these smooth waters after setting sail from the Argentine city of Ushuaia. For two days we saw no land. We were tossed mightily by rough seas that whole time. Winds approaching gale force blew the entire time. Splash from waves crashing on the ship?s bow passed above my fourth-deck window. Swells could be seen in the range of fifteen to forty feet; size varied according to the observer's level of seasickness.

Two days out of South America, we found the Southern Ocean. A coastal sanctuary was my first view the next morning. The sea seemed to be settled a bit by the surrounding land. Mile-high summits were draped in wispy clouds. Smooth and silky, the glaciers appeared to have been pierced through with the angular mountains and outcroppings. Unusually rough, the bumpy slabs of ice fall right into the sea. Looking like the range in which you'd find Everest, it sticks straight up out of the water.

Another passenger commented that the trip to get to Antarctica was like the labor of childbirth. Compared to all the other seven continents, Antarctica is the windiest, coldest, driest and highest. Holding 70 percent of earth?s fresh water, the polar plateau gets the same amount of precipitation as Death Valley does. This continent doesn?t have an indigenous human population, animals that call it home all year round, or even an owner.

The shore landings and sailing routes must depend on the weather. Though we?ve been counseled by the guides to remain flexible, our original shore landing becomes reality. Those groups to which we?ve been assigned meet on deck. I climb into an inflatable boat with the nine other people in my group. We quickly ride across the quarter mile of water. And then, with one simple step, I am in the small group of humans who has ever touched Antarctic ice.

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