Saturday. Looking for sea ice, we headed south but none nearby in the early morning. No sea birds in sight when we joined the ornithologist on deck 10 after breakfast. I was beginning to feel that maybe this trip was a mistake, no entertainment, nothing to see. But after we crossed the Antarctic Circle, we began to see huge icebergs in the distance between us and some islands. As we sailed along, we saw more icebergs, closer up. The water became filled with ice, flat surface ice and small icebergs in fantastic shapes, some with beautiful blue and green color. A few of the flat floes had seals reclined on them. Some bobbed up and down. We passed rather close to one of the huge glaciers.
The ship broke through a shallow layer of ice to much crunching and then paused in an open area that it had created. The view was spectacular, mountains, ice, glaciers, a few sea birds. In the distance was a Viking ship, the Octantis, sailing by a huge glacier.
Our adventure of the day was to be taken out on the zodiacs into the ice. Once out in the water we were offered a
libation of either hot chocolate or rum. I chose and got of the two. We were bumping along over small pieces of ice and at one point a larger chunk got stuck on the propellor of the outboard motor and the pilot had to maneuver to get it loose. At another point we passed by a small iceberg, maybe 30 or 40 feet across and when we looked back at it, a large chunk broke off, then more cracks appeared and the whole thing broke into 3 parts and the largest part turned over. The zodiac behind us was not far from the breakup and they moved away from and around it.
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