The crew up anchored from Telephone Bay within Deception Island late morning. As we sailed from Telephone Bay, from my starboard side cabin I could see two research bases on the caldera’s shore – one belonging to Argentina and another to Spain. Refer to some of the dark shapes near water level to the right of the striped hill in the first photo below. These are some of the buildings.
Then in sunlight we sailed through the entrance and out to sea. A completely different experience to the snowed-out view on arrival.
On the horizon, the glow of snow-covered mountains on the Antarctic peninsula were faintly visible.
The entrance to the caldera is small and difficult to see from the ocean. These photos two below indicate the large scale of this environment and how challenging sailing would be in bad weather, and in the days before GPS and satellites.
Suddenly many Fin and Humpback whales were in front of and beside the ship. We circled for half an hour watching them blow and arc through the water. In a sunlit sparkling sea with blue skies above. Magical.
Around the world in 58 days: no - only in 49 days 