November 19th - At Sea to South Georgia

Today we have 3 lectures and must all clean our clothing and equipment thoroughly before we are allowed to go ashore at South Georgia tomorrow.

Our first lecture was from Rob Suisted, the professional photographer and expert on mammals from New Zealand. He showed us some of his photos and gave us useful photographic tips. The next talk was from Chris on Antarctic and Sub-Antarctic birds. He was wearing a penguin hat! Number 3 was Victoria's lecture on Shackleton. It was interesting but, once again, very long. We saw our first iceberg at about 11am!


There had been a competition to guess the time we saw the first one, but we didn't win. We passed Shag Rocks and sailed between them and an iceberg. The rocks were our first sight of land for nearly two days and they looked very remote and forbidding, rising more or less vertically out of the water.


The birds that followed the ship were always great fun to watch as they swooped down and glided just above the waves. The Cape Petrels, unlike the Albatrosses who often flew off into the distance, never seemed to leave the side of the ship.


There were hundreds of fur seals in the water and we could also see cormorants, or shags. We walked 5 times round the deck for exercise, which is not in fact very far. It was now much colder, only a little above freezing. We had dinner with Foster and Jane and their friends from near Bognor, Jackie and Mansell. Tomorrow, we would finally be in South Georgia!

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