Antarctica East 2026

January 8-9: Seadays

Today (Jan 9) is a significant day (not just because it’s Martin’s birthday ) in Antarctica history. In 1907, Shackleton organised the first of what would be three of his own Antarctic expeditions. He named it The Nimrod Expedition and its aim was to reach the South Pole.  Although it failed to do so, Shackleton and three others achieved a new ‘farthest south’ record: reaching 88° 23 on 9^thJanuary 1909 – just 112 miles short of their goal.  This was the day when Shackleton made a momentous decision to turn around, and abandoned his South Pole mission.

Compared to my previous trip to Antarctica, this cruise gets much closer to the South Pole. And there’s little chance of other cruise ships having to coordinate their landings with us because we’re pretty much the ONLY ship in East Antarctica. Look how many ships are travelling from South America, compared to the number travelling from Tasmania, and the differences in distance

Travelling on board is a scientist from the Australian Antarctic division who’s hitching a ride to one of the research stations. She’s an expert on the Adelie penguin colony. There’s also a couple of scientists on board who are travelling to Mt Erebus to test diagnostic DNA samples.

For dinner last night, they had organised for the strays to again get together at Lumiere, a very upmarket french restaurant. Here are some of the seven courses….oeuf parfait, onion soup, NZ lamb rack, and a trio of chocolate for dessert. Jealous?

Some great lectures today including one on the weather, so all non weather geeks can tune out for the next bit. (Martin, here’s my weather gift to you)

So Antarctica is often described as the coldest, windiest and driest continent in the world. Why is this so?

Antarctica holds the record for the lowest temperature ever recorded on Earth, with temperatures reaching as low as -89.2°C (-128.6°F) in 1983 at the Soviet Union’s Vostok Station.

The Atacama Desert of Chile and McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica are the driest deserts in the world. They are so dry and inhospitable that the same tools showing no life on Mars in the 1970’s also showed no life in both of these locations on Earth. Today, NASA is using these two deserts to develop equipment and tests for organics that will be more sensitive in future Mars missions.

And the windiest place on earth is Commonwealth Bay in East Antartica. Commonwealth Bay is where Mawson landed and set up shop. It experiences Katabatic winds which are. mostly gale or hurricane force winds. Highest single wind speed was recorded in 1972 at 327 km/hr.

Got to do a tour of the engine room today, to see the amazing technology used by this ship, including its Azipod propulsion system which is a revolutionary marine system where the electric motor and propeller are housed in a steerable pod outside the ship’s hull, eliminating the need for rudders and shaftlines, allowing 360° rotation for superior maneuverability and pulling the ship for better fuel efficiency (5-20% savings).