We left Palmer yesterday morning, after picking up cargo
and some passengers. We headed back up to Livingston Island, where there is a
field camp at Cape Shirreff. We have to pick up some scientists who have been
living and working there and take them back to Punta Arenas with us. Since the
field camp is closing for the season, there was a lot of cargo to load onto the
ship! We pitched in to help with the loading and unloading.
There isn’t a pier at Cape Shirreff, so everything had to
ferried across on the zodiacs. First, the zodiacs carried some of us from the
LMG over to the camp to help load gear into cargo bags. Uffe, Dave, and Kelli
went with that group. Here’s that group waiting to get on the zodiacs and head
for shore in the background:
They loaded the gear onto the zodiacs, and the MT’s were
driving the zodiacs back and forth to deliver it all to the LMG. Here’s Mike
and Branson bringing us a load. A crane pulls the cargo bag out of the zodiac
and puts it on the back deck of the LMG.
Connor and I were on “deck duty” here on the LMG. We
helped load all of that cargo into a mill van that will hold it all the way
back to Punta Arenas. Here we are in the mill van, along with Cindy who also
was on deck duty:
It was sweaty work! We were feeling pretty tough at the
end of it:
From here, we head back to Punta Arenas. It will take a
few days re-crossing the Drake Passage back to South America. The weather
reports are that it won’t be too bad for the rest of today, but then a low
pressure system moves in and we’ll have rough seas again. At least this time we
know how to prepare. I have two water bottles full of water and a stash of
apples and nuts. That way, I can just lay in my cabin without having to get up
to get food and water. We’ll all hunker down again for a couple days until we
arrive back in the Strait of Magellan. We’ll see if I can write any blog posts
during the transit…
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