Cruise Day 5 Curtiss Bay and Spert Island

by Ed · January 16, 2023

Greetings, everyone!

Today is Jan 8th, 2023, and we have our next two excursions today – a landing in Curtiss Bay and a zodiac ride around Spert Island.

As we glide into the bay the ice begins to collect and thickens. This is brash ice, and there are plenty of bergy bits and icebergs about! But the water is flat with a long slow swell. Soon we see the zodiacs go out to scout the area, going around a collection of brash ice near the ship.

Again, Zodiac Groups 1, 2, and 3 are up first. So much for rotating. We’re supposed to go at 8:30. So we have breakfast delivered to the room again, and get dressed. At 8:00 Schalk announces there is too much ice for a landing, but we will do a zodiac tour this morning.

Let me take a moment to talk about the ship and excursion team.

The Silver Cloud was retrofitted several years ago to allow her to sail in the icy waters. She is not rated as an icebreaker, but is rated for ice cruising. Most cruise ships are not! She sails anywhere between the Arctic and Antarctic ports.

The excursion team is a group of 28 people led by Schalk (pronounced “sculk”). The team is composed of biologists, botanists, geologists, specialists in seals, whales, fish, and birds, as well as historians, professional photographers, and logisticians. Schalk works closely with the ship’s captain, Captain Domanin, on the ports we enter, whether we anchor or stationkeep, which landing zones we target, weather conditions, ice conditions, etc. Before any passenger goes ashore, Schalk and the team launch 8-10 zodiacs to scout the path through any ice, determine the landing spot, chisel out steps in the ice if necessary, and mark our allowed hiking paths with marker flags so we avoid interfering with the local wildlife. Once this is complete, then Schalk will announce what the plan for the excursion will really be.

The night before the excursion, Schalk hosts a “Plan and Recap” session to discuss the planned excursions, explain if they are landings or zodiac tours, and give us the A and B landing sites and hiking paths, identifying where penguin colonies reside, what seals frequent the area, and what, if any historical sites are present. Schalk will tell us which zodiac groups will go at what times and what the weather forecast is for temperature and wind. If we had tours earlier that day they will recap where we went and what we saw, possibly showing some photos the professional photographers capture. If necessary, we will receive a quick briefing from the historian, Mila, on what the island’s significance is or was. Then they open the floor for questions. This briefing takes about 30 minutes, and is a great way to prepare for the next day!

OK, back to our day!

We are dressed and ready to go when the call comes for Zodiac Group 2 to proceed to the Mud Room. It’s a minor zoo down there. Did I mention each Zodiac Group is roughly 30-35 people. Three groups are designed to contain about 100 people, which is the limit for how many people at a time can arrive on land. Zodiac Group 1 and whoever in Group 2 got there ahead of us were getting boots on, fighting with pantlegs, donning gloves, losing ship cards, and struggling to get out to the zodiacs. But we made it out. We learn how hard it is to tuck sleeves into mittens or gloves and tighten wrist straps when you are wearing mittens or gloves. Adjusting a balaclava/gaiter around your neck and face is equally challenging with gloves and mittens! But we make do.

As soon as our zodiac turns from the ship, Nil (pronounced “Neil”), the excursion team guide and zodiac driver, spotted a whale and we began following! We would see its rough, barnacle-covered snout, followed by a blow, then it would submerge. After repeating this a half dozen times the whale kindly showed us its tail we moved on.

Nil follows Fede (Federico) – they’re a teamed pair for safety purposes – and they thread their ways through the ice flows. It wasn’t too much longer before we enter the bay and begin seeing leopard seals on the larger ice formations!

Fede is as giddy as a schoolboy – he’s our seal expert on board! He says it is very rare to find leopard seals on cruise excursions. He often has to hunt for hours to find one for his studies. The leopard seals are lounging, one seal per bergy bit (a bergy bit is an ice chunk less than 5 meters high). It’s relatively easy to identify the males, and all leopard seals have a Cheshire Cat grin. For cataloguing purposes the photo team told us they photograph the left side of the face – mottled fur and scars provide ample unique identification. Fede’s team would tag any they find in their studies – he didn’t see any tags on the seals we see today. Here are few of my favorite shots:

We hear the thunderous cannon shot of a calving glacier, but don’t see where it happened, so Nil decided we need to move out – we don’t want to get caught in that wave. On our way back we see some beautiful icebergs. The first one below is called a “dry dock” iceberg by the crew. In this one there are two icebergs with a single bottom under the water.

The second one I labeled “The Sleeping Rhino”. This is like finding pictures in the clouds!

We see the Silver Cloud appear in the fog.

We are back on the ship before 10 AM. Wow! It feels like it should be after noon!

I have a chance to photograph Lu and Duane at the rail before lunch – how cute a couple they are!

Once the second round of zodiacs are back on board the Captain raises anchor, spins us around and we head off to the second site today, Spert Island. This one is planned to be a zodiac tour.

We have Ale (pronounced “Ah-leh”, short for Alejandro) as our driver on the Spert Island tour. We travel to the left and find a colony of Chinstrap penguins.

We arrive at an island with Chinstrap penguins. We can’t get very close due to the crashing waves, but I can clearly see the penguins climbing up the penguin highway. When we see a few penguins hanging out on the rocky coast we can verify these are Chinstraps on the left AND Gentoo penguins in the center and right! There are also supposed to be Adelie penguins in the area, but I don’t have any photos to verify their presence.

There is an arch we passed – Ale calls it a cave – that he wants to explore so he radios his buddy and we head out. The cave is located at a cut between the rocks that is exposed to the ocean – the waves were coming through fiercely!

Ale says he won’t take us in through these waters, He backtracked and headed “to the right” and followed other zodiacs. We spot a few more Leopard Seals on our way.

Ale and a couple of other zodiacs discover a shallow, quiet passage to the back side of the island. The back side hosts an area that is like an amphitheater and has some tiny waterfalls. It is beautiful, and none of my photos do it justice.

I spot a unique glacier flow – it has a mineral vein that is incredibly shaped like a perfect kite rhomboid. How can this occur naturally in nature?

Another wonderful excursion complete!

Once back on board we prepare for our dinner reservation at “Hot Rocks”. This is a restaurant operated out of the pool bar’s The Grill lunch spot. It is located outside, so dinner is chilly! Who would think about eating outdoors in Antarctica? We do our own cooking on a hot lava rock they bring to the table. It’s kinda fun!