The Weddell Sea welcomed us today with howling winds and glassy calm, remote islands and chaotic landscapes of sea ice, bright sunshine, racing clouds, a nearly full moon in the evening and a fantastic, hoped-for but unexpected sighting of an emperor penguin. This is a nearly legendary place, the setting of the harrowing adventures of Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition and Nordenskjold’s Swedish Antarctic Expedition. Thoughts of that heroic history were always in the backs of our minds as we enjoyed our first sightings of the continent and our first day in the true Antarctic wilderness.