We woke up early for the cruise down the Gerlache Strait, which we were told would be beautiful and worth getting up very early for. We planned to get up at 4am, but considering how poorly I’d slept (due to the boat rocking), I slept in until 5am. It was definitely scenic, with icebergs and snow-covered mountains, though there was low cloud cover and rain, so I’m sure it could be more scenic :)
The plan for our first day in Antarctica was to do a shore landing at Orne Harbor in the morning, and then our checkout dive at Orne Island in the afternoon. Right at the end of breakfast, they announced that the ice conditions at the landing spot for Orne Harbor prevented us from landing, so we’d do zodiac cruises instead. It was raining quite hard, and occasionally sleeting/snowing. It was pretty “miserable” weather, but since we had our rain gear on and were all bundled up, I thought it was pretty fun to zip around in a zodiac in horrible weather :). We saw a couple colonies of chinstrap penguins up on the rocks, with a mix of gentoo and chinstraps hanging out closer to the water. We also looked at some icebergs and some nice ice cliffs.
We had a fairly short break between lunch and meeting up by the dive skiffs, because we needed to get our tanks initially set up. They allocated divers to skiffs, and we managed to get one of the skiffs designated as the BAUE boat, which meant it had 6 people in it (I think all of the other boats had only 4 people). While we were getting into our undergarments, there was an announcement that due to wind conditions, the afternoon landing was cancelled. But diving was still on; phew. I was honestly a bit surprised they took us out, for a checkout dive no less, in the conditions that we had. It was sporty!
It took a while for everyone to get their gear set up, into their suits, the boats into the water, and people onto the boats. But eventually we made it out of there and found a spot for the checkout dive. I think the only criteria for the dive site was that it be shallow and relatively protected; in other words, not really any guarantee that there’d be anything to see. Rob and I were the morons that were underweighted (probably because we have *really* heavy single tanks at home, and didn’t have any information about what the tanks we were diving actually were), and had to go back to the boat to get more weight. Once we had that figured out, Rob grabbed his camera from the boat and we went back down for a dive of about 30 minutes. It was a pretty boring dive site — a pebbly bottom with some kelp and algae, lots of little “bug” crustaceans, even more limpet/snail things, and we did find one giant isopod, which I held in my hand and posed with :). My hands and face (the uncovered part) were freezing, but I was otherwise okay temperature-wise.
At the end of the dive, we were waiting for the skiff for a bit, and while we waited for the skiff, my feet started to get cold (I guess because all of the gas was squeezed out when I went vertical) and I was holding my hands in the air to get gas in them in hopes that would warm them up a bit. When the skiff finally came to get us, I was like completely incapable of getting my gear off because my hands weren’t working. So Rob had to help me a lot, which of course he was delighted by. After I got back into the skiff my hands hurts so much that I felt nauseous. But luckily that passed pretty quickly and feeling returned to my hands pretty soon after that.
It took a while for everyone to get their gear set up, into their suits, the boats into the water, and people onto the boats. But eventually we made it out of there and found a spot for the checkout dive. I think the only criteria for the dive site was that it be shallow and relatively protected; in other words, not really any guarantee that there’d be anything to see. Rob and I were the morons that were underweighted (probably because we have *really* heavy single tanks at home, and didn’t have any information about what the tanks we were diving actually were), and had to go back to the boat to get more weight. Once we had that figured out, Rob grabbed his camera from the boat and we went back down for a dive of about 30 minutes. It was a pretty boring dive site — a pebbly bottom with some kelp and algae, lots of little “bug” crustaceans, even more limpet/snail things, and we did find one giant isopod, which I held in my hand and posed with :). My hands and face (the uncovered part) were freezing, but I was otherwise okay temperature-wise.
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