Antarctic Circle & Detaille Island
This morning proved to be very exciting with the momentous event of crossing the Antarctic Circle (66° 33.4' S). It happened right after breakfast inside Crystal Sound. We continued even farther south and then entered thick pack ice in Shumskiy Cove on the Antarctic continent, eventually reaching our most southerly position at 66° 57.46' S, 67° 18.18' W. The sounds and physical sensations of crushing through the ice is an unforgettable experience. It is as mesmerizing as watching waves at the beach or a warming campfire on a cold night in the woods.
We later worked our way over to Detaille Island (66° 52' S, 66° 48' W) which was discovered by the famous French explorer Jean-Baptist Charcot in 1909. Our quest was an abandoned British base that was established by Falklands Islands Dependency Survey (FIDS) personnel in 1956, and abandoned just three years later. The base was built here to affect a long term study of sea ice and to monitor meteorological and astronomical events, but ice conditions worsened over the next two years and the scientists became trapped there in 1959. After a worrisome extended stay, a rescue ship finally made it through the pack ice and got within 10 or 20 miles of the base and radioed the 10 men to come immediately. They literally jumped up and carried everything they could over the ice to the rescue ship…leaving behind a virtual time capsule from the middle- to late-1950s. We made a landing in the afternoon and found the two doors broken in by winter storms and much of the inside filled with ice-hardened snow drifts. It was very sad to see the place in such disrepair, so we decided to clean it up and repair the doors. Several staff naturalists, along with some guests and officers rolled up their sleeves and hacked away the ice and shoveled out the snow for an hour before we brought the guests ashore. In the meantime, our ship’s carpenter went to work and successfully repaired the two doors and a broken window, complete with new latches. For us, it was like stepping back in time by 45 years, as we examined the various rooms and found them filled with books, magazines, charts, clothing, sleeping gear, machines, tools, and a huge supply of canned, packaged, and bottled foods and drink that many of us recognized from so long ago (see the accompanying photo of the commandant’s quarters). The building was surprisingly well built and is still snug and comfortable. We felt good about leaving the place in much better shape than when we found it.
The biggest event of the evening was passing a gigantic ice berg, which we first mistook for a tabular berg, but soon realized it was in fact the entire tongue of a massive glacier which had broken free and floated away as a single piece of ice! Humpback whales and Minke whales kept us company as we sailed out into the Bellingshausen Sea to avoid having to fight the pack ice again on the way back northward.
This morning proved to be very exciting with the momentous event of crossing the Antarctic Circle (66° 33.4' S). It happened right after breakfast inside Crystal Sound. We continued even farther south and then entered thick pack ice in Shumskiy Cove on the Antarctic continent, eventually reaching our most southerly position at 66° 57.46' S, 67° 18.18' W. The sounds and physical sensations of crushing through the ice is an unforgettable experience. It is as mesmerizing as watching waves at the beach or a warming campfire on a cold night in the woods.
We later worked our way over to Detaille Island (66° 52' S, 66° 48' W) which was discovered by the famous French explorer Jean-Baptist Charcot in 1909. Our quest was an abandoned British base that was established by Falklands Islands Dependency Survey (FIDS) personnel in 1956, and abandoned just three years later. The base was built here to affect a long term study of sea ice and to monitor meteorological and astronomical events, but ice conditions worsened over the next two years and the scientists became trapped there in 1959. After a worrisome extended stay, a rescue ship finally made it through the pack ice and got within 10 or 20 miles of the base and radioed the 10 men to come immediately. They literally jumped up and carried everything they could over the ice to the rescue ship…leaving behind a virtual time capsule from the middle- to late-1950s. We made a landing in the afternoon and found the two doors broken in by winter storms and much of the inside filled with ice-hardened snow drifts. It was very sad to see the place in such disrepair, so we decided to clean it up and repair the doors. Several staff naturalists, along with some guests and officers rolled up their sleeves and hacked away the ice and shoveled out the snow for an hour before we brought the guests ashore. In the meantime, our ship’s carpenter went to work and successfully repaired the two doors and a broken window, complete with new latches. For us, it was like stepping back in time by 45 years, as we examined the various rooms and found them filled with books, magazines, charts, clothing, sleeping gear, machines, tools, and a huge supply of canned, packaged, and bottled foods and drink that many of us recognized from so long ago (see the accompanying photo of the commandant’s quarters). The building was surprisingly well built and is still snug and comfortable. We felt good about leaving the place in much better shape than when we found it.
The biggest event of the evening was passing a gigantic ice berg, which we first mistook for a tabular berg, but soon realized it was in fact the entire tongue of a massive glacier which had broken free and floated away as a single piece of ice! Humpback whales and Minke whales kept us company as we sailed out into the Bellingshausen Sea to avoid having to fight the pack ice again on the way back northward.
