This morning while everyone had a chance to enjoy a nice sleep in, the bridge team was working to keep the ship in a safe position in Godthul Harbour. Winds were howling in the bay, with wind speeds recorded up to 78 knots, hurricane speeds. We all heard the thrusters operating intensely, which made most of us aware that a potential landing was not going to happen this morning.
At 9.00 our expedition leader Shaun Powell updated us on the weather conditions and confirmed that we were going to hold off for now and monitor the hurricane force winds. We were all keeping our fingers crossed for an improvement in the weather and a chance to explore this beautiful bay later on.
During that time, Erin McFadden invited us in the lounge for her presentation “How Whales Dive” in which she talked about the physiology and diving behaviours of some of the whales we have seen during our voyage. She shared some very interesting insights into how whales have adapted to be able to dive so deeply and often for long periods of time.
Around 11 a.m., while we were watching episode three of the re-enactment of Shackleton’s journey, we all noticed the weather was improving, which was confirmed by Shaun around lunchtime. The expedition team and the captain had created an exciting plan for the afternoon: a Zodiac cruise inside the bay and a short landing to get up close and personal with the elephant seals, fur seals, king penguins, and Gentoo penguins. After the Zodiac cruise we had a choice to go for a hike up the higher ridge overlooking a beautiful lake and also Godthul Harbour, or to stay on the beach and spend time with all the wildlife there. The beach was full of activity—lots of fur seals, king penguins, and Gentoo penguins. 47 of us decided to go for a nice leg stretch and the rest decided to stay on the beach. The weather got better and better as the afternoon progressed. The winds died down and the sun kept us nice and warm all afternoon. Everyone had such a great time soaking up the magic scenery and enjoying the abundance of wildlife here in Godthul Harbor.
At 18:45 the last Zodiac left the shore and dinner was about to be served when the last of us arrived onboard. While most of us enjoyed a celebratory cocktail in the lounge before dinner, Shaun updated us on our plans for tomorrow and gave everyone the heads up that we were planning a pre-breakfast landing at around 5 a.m. This made everyone go to dinner pretty quickly, to be able to get an early rest and our hotel manager Ian Vella decided to cancel the crew show.
Around 22:00 the lounge was pretty empty, as most of us had crawled into bed with memorable thoughts about the unexpected great day we had today.
