Day 6 – Lamaire, Vernadsky, and our ice-locked Zodiacs (10 Dec)

The morning wake-up calls - English, Finnish – get us up early for passage through the well-known, picturesque and oft-pictured Lamaire Channel. I spend almost two hours on the bow, taking pictures and staring. While cold and windy, the weather and visibility were great. Lamaire is a narrow channel with huge mountains arising on both sides, tons of ice. Often, the Lamaire is not navigable, they tell us. It’s no problem today. In fact, we see the ship the Fram ahead as we finish the passage, and behind us we see another, larger ship. I don’t think I’ve ever taken so many photos, and in fact, forced myself to not take photos for minutes at a time to just experience the vistas.

After the Lamaire, we attempted several anchorages, but there is ice everywhere. We finally settle on the Ukrainian research station Akademi Vernadsky. This former British station (we’re told later that the British sold to it to Ukraine some years back for 1 sterling pound so that the Brits didn’t have to clean up and remediate the site) is on one of the “Argentine Islands” (specifically Galindez Island), which are a group of small, low islands near the Palmer Archipelago. We all Zodiac to the station, navigating lots of ice.

The station consists of a few low buildings and physical plant features like a generator and fuel depots. The Ukrainian staff welcomes us and we all pile into the very warm main building, in front of which is your classic signpost pointing the directions and distances of places of interest to Ukrainians, most of which are more than 12,000 kilometers away. We get somewhat spontaneous tours of the first floor which houses quarters, labs, infirmary, communications, gear, workout room (which most of us linger in to look at Ukrainian-style cheesecake posters of women arranged around the weight machines.) This is officially a research station, but the gear all looks like it’s from 1957 Soviet machine shop, and it’s hard from my point of view as a scientist to believe much research gets done here.

The energy level picks up after we pad up, bootless now, to the second level. Here, there is the kitchen, dining hall, and a real bar with pool tables, music and home-made vodka. I don’t ask what the vodka is home-made from, but buy a shot for 2 Euro and choke it down. Many of us are lined up to send postcards from the “post office”, which is two Vernadsky station members with a metal cash box, some stamps and a pile of postcards. Some people get their passports unofficially stamped, but this surpasses the touristy threshold for me. The Prof M staff is animated in the presence of the Vernadsky station crew, and there is a lot of visiting between them. It feels like a party. I gather they know each other somewhat.

After 90 minutes of this, it’s time set out again for the Prof M. But the Zodiacs have a touch time finding their way back out through the ice, which has piled up under the on-shore winds. We bake in the strong Antarctic summer sun while we fight the ice for an hour. Many of us later had sunburned faces. I slapped on a lot of SPF50, feeling the weakly ozone-filtered, summertime, mid-day Antarctic UV on my skin. Each Zodiac pulls out its spare paddles and the front passengers push aside the larger pieces of ice and the Zodiac pilots make crazy tight loops to try and find a path out to the open waters. Natalia breaks a wooden paddle when it levers between a large piece of ice and her Zodiac. Thinking about this I watch doubtfully as some passengers kick at the ice, wondering if someone’s leg will end up like Natalie’s paddle. At one point, we are nearly motionless, trapped in the ice, as Delphine’s lead boat repeatedly experiences a stalled outboard motor.

The Professor Molchanov came to the rescue and got us when we finally reach open water, probably 2 km from the original anchorage.

We set sail for Petermann Island – but there was again too much ice for anchorage, so we ended up going back through Lamaire Channel in the opposite direction, then a near-mainland Zodiac cruise. The location was a bit obscure, but I think we were between the mainland and Renaud Island.

Very cold and windy during the Zodiac-ing! The coldest experience I’ve had here yet. The waves were rough, the skies grey, strong winds, and low temperatures. But, we had up-close dramatic views of glacial faces, huge icebergs, and 2 meter long icicles hanging from some of the wave-eroded glacial faces. I was in a boat with the Doctor, Jessica and a Russian crew member – only the three of us. I got a little short-changed this time around, because we got loaded last, and they didn’t think they’d need all the Zodiacs, so the three of us had to wait while the crew put the last Zodiac in the water. Then, our mute Russian crew member (I never did learn this fellow’s name) tried to make up for lost time, but between trying to catch up to the others. Not having an interpretive guide, we didn’t see as much.

Our ship’s doctor video-taped most of the time during this Zodiac cruise. The lovely Jessica, of course, was filmed extensively, the sea and ice was too, our Zodiac pilot and the back of the boat a lot less so, and me – the only other person on the boat - not at all. I’m less photogenic than an outboard motor, I take it.

The Zodiac bumped pretty hard with so little weight in it and sea wind chop from 1 - 1.5 meters. As we loaded back on board the Prof M, some passengers grumbled and were a little unhappy, feeling like we should not have gone out in these conditions. But I was exhilarated by the experience. As if to prove their point though, our guide Tari, while riding his now-empty Zodiac up on the crane used to stage the inflatables, was suddenly picked up by a gust of wind and very nearly flipped his boat in mid-air.

Obviously, no kayaking on this day.

But we made a plan with Frode in the evening for an ambitious 6AM kayak circumnavigation of Doumer Island. The Prof M returned to the area of Lockroy, finally anchoring near the Iofe, a larger cruise ship. I went to bed early, anticipating a very early day. As I lay reading in my top bunkbed I could see Zodiacs rounding the Prof M starboard side and boarding the Iofe. I assumed it was a Prof M – Iofe crew social thing, but was later told by Anjali that it was instead the Port Lockroy folks coming aboard the Iofe to visit. The sea traffic that night was busier than any time since we embarked, reminding me of civilization a few degrees north of us.