JASON KNIGHT

Polar plunge

Thanks to Mike for capturing my polar plunge here. According to Cath, our previous polar plunges (at the "spa") were not real because we had a sauna to warm us up before and after.

I also had felt so good after the previous plunges that I wanted more of that sweet endorphin high that had chased the previous experience.

I also wanted to see how much of the "last plunge high" might have been from the leopard seal adrenaline / sauna heat. So I needed to run more experiments.

Unfortunately, everyone else seemed to be done with their experiments so I couldn't get any additional takers. Jason said he was a "Maybe" but the opportunity came and went without him :).

Immediately after jumping into the water, outwardly I was trying to achieve a two things:

1. Make some funny quips for the camera.
2. But more importantly: Indicate to the crew both explicitly through my poor signaling and implicitly through my calm demeanor that I was okay and of sane mind. This was important for two reasons: a. This is a dangerous thing (you can hear Cath's Australian voice especially conveying her concern) b. Most importantly (for me): notice what was happening inside of my body during this cold exposure.

And how did it feel?

During the swim

The initial bite of cold was less severe than I was expecting. I think this was because the cold immediately started to numb parts of my body. Starting with the outermost layers of sense receptors in the skin. This happened insanely fast, probably on the order of single digit seconds.

Then I felt the cold start to work it's way inwards as it started to get to my muscles. I felt response times and proprioception start to retreat a bit from typical levels.

By the time I needed to lift myself up onto the transom deck, I could feel muscle power was down somewhere between 10-30% off peak (best guess based on feel). This was really alarming because I was only in the water for 50 seconds according to the footage here.

Just goes to show how dangerous cold water can be! Being able to lift yourself up is something many people take for granted, and making sure you can pull in someone who has fallen overboard is an important maritime safety skill.

After the swim

The high this time was nowhere near the last one. I think adrenaline amounts were about the same (jumping off the boom was probably similar to belaying into seal infested waters).

My theory for why this was is that the longer time in the water took a physical tax on my body, so the positive endorphins from the stress were mostly counteracted by the negative depressive effects of the physical depletion. I definitely was more tired and relaxed the rest of the day.

The reason I washed off my face and hair with the water bottle was because I had to use my one towel to dry off after this polar plunge. And any salt water would then be in my towel for all my showers/tooth brush/glasses drying etc for the remainder of the trip. Another interesting factoid was how warm the water was coming out of the bottle even though it was "cold tap water" from inside.

Cath also informed me that her best polar plunge to date was one chap who:

1. Stripped butt naked.
2. Dove into the water.
3. Swam to an iceberg.
4. Used an ice axe on the iceberg to pull himself up.
5. Drank a shot of alcoholic beverage.
6. Swam back to the boat.

I did not plan to try and one-up that one, but maybe on a follow-up trip.

Kayak flip interview

One day while kayaking (an earlier day than the polar plunge above) we were passing an area where a cruise ship was dingy-ing people to and from the beach to see penguins.

At one point, an empty dingy drove close by us, at maximal sub-planing speed, in a curve that maximized his wake. Chef was closest to the dingy and the wake flipped him into the water.

While those closest to him helped him disengage his skirt and stabilize him and his gear I called Icebird on the VHF for a rapid dingy rescue. Luckily, Chef was okay and made it back to the boat without incident but it is always a serious incident when people go into the water here, especially away from the boat.

What's worse, the dingy that flipped Chef's kayak said "sorry" but refused to come over and help the situation that he had created.

The Wynn's did a series of interviews around the incident and will include it (I'm assuming) in a future video, here's my clip of one of these interviews so you can see what it was like from my perspective. I'll let the full story be told by the Wynn's.

Mike - king of the mountain

One of our smaller hikes before setting off on passage.

Every so once in a while you'd find these very red rocks. I assume it's a higher iron oxide content but it's weird thinking how they've been distributed by ice movements over millenia.

Sled day! - Sasha giving the shovel a go

There are several stories to tell about this day, but I think I'll let the Wynn's tell these as well since they have more video and photos. But I'll say this much: Toughy has me beat fair and square in the sledding department.

Port Lockroy

A small British base that you can send mail out of, but they had closed for the season. It was kinda cool looking in the windows and thinking about the kinds of people that stay here.

This bay was used as a whale processing area long ago, and someone had assembled these bones back into a skeleton. Sad memories for these creatures. Cath and I liked to talk about how cool it will be someday to talk to whales using AI translators.

A corroded sensor too far

At one point in the trip, our water heater back home broke. Emily did 99% of the troubleshooting and spare parts ordering with Rheem but I sent several encouraging: "you got this!" messages along the way.

But for the piece de resistance I offered to video chat during the repairs to be a buddy on the wall.

At one point I even helped when Emily sent me down behind a fairing so I could see if a screw was turning or was stripped out. Definitely an incredible use of duplex full video calling using sattelites across half the earth. What a time to be alive!

Ice cliffs

On our very last dingy ride and hike before the passage back, we got a long walk along some rocky beaches. I tried to capture some of the cool ice cliff sculptures along the way here.

Anchor watch schedule

the night before we left, we were close to rocks and in a less protected anchorage so we had our first time on anchor watch. For the less experienced among among us (raises hand) Cath even wrote the wind and depth conditions we should watch for and if we exceeded those, we were to wake one of the crew.

The number in the far right column is the number of minutes the person requested to be given from wakeup time to when they'd be ready to take over.

It was kind of fun to have some (what turned out to be) fairly quiet time in the middle of the night. Too many clouds for good star gazing unfortunately, but still fun.

Waking up Steve was a bit of a gamble: I was told by Toughy that he can sometimes startle/spook awake, so I whispered as gently as I could when over his bed "Steve" and he immediately woke up, "I'm awake." Wow!

Doug got to see a cruise ship go by later in the night.