Sunday, January 22nd, 2018
As mentioned the sun didn’t set and we started the day very early (00:00 – 00:45) on deck 12, toasting the never-ending daylight for the next days of our journey.
Arriving at Cape Adare meant that we had reached the main destination of our journey: The Ross Sea.
In 1899, Carsten Bochgrevink and the 10 men of the Southern Cross Expedition spent a miserable winter on the pebbled shores of Ridley Beach at Cape Adare and became the first humans to winter-over on the continent. His base, the first buildings ever constructed in the Antarctic, still stands today as a lonely and redundant outpost of civilization.
On the approach of Cape Adare Stephen was on the look-out for Mt Bevin. There’s a bit of a story attached to this (family) mountain, so best to follow the link to find out more. Note however that Stephen’s mum’s last name is Bevin. Main thing was: we hadn’t seen the actual mountain with our own eyes yet and this was the closest we’d ever been (and maybe will be, who knows…).
Around 13:00 members of the Expedition Team took to the zodiacs to find a suitable place to land on Ridley Beach. Alas, there was far too much ice obstructing access to whole beach. So, a landing was not possible but we did go zodiac cruising. After 7 days at sea we were all very happy with the opportunity to get off the ship for a while. The weather and seas were both near to ideal for a zodiac cruise. Here are ‘some’ photos taken during that zodiac ride. Warning: if you do not like penguins…. best not to scroll further 🙂
