This is the Silver Cloud, our ship to Antarctica. We board at 3.30pm.
The Silver Cloud was the first of a fleet of 13 owned by SilverSeas, an Italian company that is now 60% owned by Royal Carribean Cruises and 40% by the founding Italian family. Silver Cloud entered service in April 1994, and was refurbished in 2017. Some other ships in the fleet are Silver Shadow, Silver Whisper, Silver Spirit, Silver Explorer, and more - you get the gist. Silver Dawn will start in 2021.
This is our room for the next ten days, very nice.
This is our balcony. We are room number 614. We were also given a red Antarctic jacket.
Here is my swipe card, for rooms, and for getting on and off the boat.
This is Song, our cleaner. Her first name is Ziyan. She says it is easier for people to call her Song. I agree. She has a beautiful smile.
This is JonJon, our butler. Yes we are travelling in style. He services 15 rooms. No question is stupid he says, we are here to serve you, and you have a trip to the Antarctic you will never forget. It is hoped you will become an ambassador he says, for this pristine, untouched, and can be very inhospitable world.
Later in the trip Jon Jon takes my arm to go to dinner with Bill. We ask him a few questions over our stay. He is married to Sarah who works on the ship at the restaurant La Terrazza. on level 7. He has been with SiverSeas for 15 years and met his wife on the ship (they married last year).
Schalk, the Expedition Leader, talks over the intercom. He says we now won’t be leaving until 8.30pm, we were scheduled to leave at 5pm. The reason he gives us is the crew were waiting on essential freight for the trip, and it is scheduled to arrive just after 8. Maybe petrol for the Zodiacs is the essential freight I think? The late departure means we won’t see anything in the Beagle Channel as it will be dark. I was looking forward to sighting a few birds on the deck. It was one of the reasons I wanted to go by ship. Too bad there is always on the way back!
We set off through the Beagle Channel.
This is what we might have seen in the Beagle Channel.
At 7.00pm we have an emergency drill. We take life jackets to level 8 (Panorama Room). There are 220 people on board as guests and 227 staff from 37 different countries.
We don’t get in the life boats but here they are.
We get introduced to the Expedition Leaders.
There are four restaurants on board, one you do not have to book, the other three you do. We book La Terrazza at 7.30 pm, it is Italian. I order a mozzarella, tomato and walnut pasta. It is so yummy I have it 3 times on the trip. We meet Mick and Linda from Perth. This is their fifth SilverSeas trip. They have a great sense of humour and it is nice to talk to Australians and people in the know - they recommend dining with the expedition guides, which we end up doing often and it is a great tip.
Next trip they say they will get free laundry. I think this is a strange thing to say as I saw there was a laundrette with a washing machine and dryers on level 4. I like doing my own washing and I never like filling out the form that goes with someone else doing my laundry - different strokes for different folks I think to myself. But Mick and Linda are good sorts and we see them a lot on the trip.
We are pretty much the last to leave after dinner, which is why there's nobody else in the picture.
On to Antarctica. Overnight we will enter the Drake Passage. The Drake Passage has no land mass on it's latitude anywhere on the planet, and the winds push the ocean through a very small gap - so you can get very big seas. We have two days at sea to reach the Antarctica Peninsula.
Here are the currents in the Drake Passage, which as well as the wind factor and small passage is why the waves can get so big. Also albatrosses thrive in the winds, and sea animals love the food all of the above provide.
The next day I did see wandering albatross, and grey headed and black browed albatross. I found this on YouTube, which was pretty much our trip. Our trip was a bit bumpy the first night, but then pretty flat - mostly winds up to just 20 knots. Antarctica is 800km away (a day and a half's cruising).
Here is where we are going - roughly. The exact trip will depend on the weather.
