Peter Kinsella's Antarctic Voyage Diary
Saturday 27th January, Cape Adare ( 71° 18.0' S 170° 10.6' E )
At 0630 hours we made our first landing on the continent of Antarctica at Cape Adare, which is the entrance to the Ross Sea and has the largest colony of adelie penguins in the world. It was snowing with an outside temperature of -3°C to -4°C and a light south easterly blowing. It was cloudy at first but the sun came out periodically. It was a spectacular sight with white snow on black basalt rock and 500,000 penguins dotting the shoreline. It is also one of the smelliest places I have ever experienced with all the guano from the penguins lying everywhere.
Cape Adare
It is also the site of Karsten Borchgrevinck's
1899 Southern Cross expedition hut (No 1), where the first over-wintering
on the continent took place just over 100 years ago. Ten men lived here
for the first year. Subsequently, Scott and others used the hut as an
advance base in 1911. Parts of the building are remarkably well preserved
and there are still tins of food such as soup, bovril, chocolate etc.
in the racks . They have tested and eaten some of the food from the huts
and found it still edible at over 90 years old.
Borchgrevinck was apparently not a nice guy and had an ego as big as
the Continent itself. However the hut he built is probably the best anyone
had ever constructed down there. We were allowed in only at three at a
time . There was a NZ government representative travelling with us and
he controlled most of the huts. He ensured all boots were cleaned and
scraped before we entered and that we touched nothing whilst inside.
Cape Adare is very difficult to get onto and apparently there has only
been less than 200 people per year who have made it there over the last
10 years and before that only a handful in total. My clothes kept me pretty
warm except for my feet where I had three pair of socks inside my gum
boots which turned out to be insufficient. We also cruised the area in
Zodiacs and photographed penguins on the numerous small and colourful
icebergs.
Adelie penguins just off Cape Adare - the Kapitan Khlebnikov is in the background
After leaving Cape Adare and just before Possession island we ran into brilliant sunshine and a series of huge tabular icebergs. We cruised south in perfect but cold weather parallel to a massive mountain range covered in snow and ice . Many peaks were over 3000 meters and Mount Herschel is over 4000 meters high. Eventually we ran out of the icebergs and were now in first year pack ice and the clear water of the Ross Sea. Suddenly, at about 1700 hours we spotted another ship 9 miles to port - an unbelievable occurrence since we are in the most remote sea on earth. It turned out to be an Italian research vessel and since the Russians don’t speak Italian one of our guests spoke to the ship on the VHF. The next day we were invited to visit the Italian Base at Terra Nova. During the day since leaving Cape Adare, we saw more adelie penguins, one lonely emperor penguin, weddell seals , a few killer whales and crabeater seals . Tabular icebergs can be enormous . They break off the Ross Ice shelf in sometimes enormous pieces . Generally they are about 40 metres high above the water and therefore 160 metres deep below the waterline. They can be as big as 160 kilometres long and 50 kilometres wide.
Left to Right : Gary, Me, John & Charlie near Possession Island between Cape Adare & Terra Nova Bay
In the afternoon I had a swim in the pool which is generally used by the passengers, although it is for the crew also. It has salt water directly pumped in from the Southern Ocean and is marginally heated to 25°. I also had a sauna . Do these Russian crew members like it hot!!! One of the guys who couldn’t speak much English, offered me a "Russian massage" (I think ??). I agreed and boy it was good, but very hot whilst having it . They put a bunch of branches and leaves into a hot water bowl. It’s similar to tannin or tea and he hit me and ran these branches all over me. I was a little worried for a few minutes and kept my eye open for the "handcuffs" which thankfully didn’t appear.