JASON KNIGHT

More kayaking - insane icebergs

On our way to the next destination, we did some more amazing kayaking.

Sadly I don't many pictures or video of this (so hard to do while kayaking) but we kayaked through what felt like a narrow passage (relatively speaking that is it was still hundreds of feet wide) with ice cliffs several hundred feet high on each side. Hard for the brain to soak in. You could also hear "calving" events the whole time with large amounts of ice falling in for miles around us. Each one sounding like distant thunder, gun cracks, and explosions depending on the circumstances.

This iceberg (cluster?) was waiting for us on the far end of the ice strait. I'd love to be able to get close to these things, but the danger is just too high of ice falls and inversions.

Breakfast the next day

I'm getting hazy on the exact timeline here, so just go with me here.

Talking around the boat

I want to say that Cath and Nikki were swapping stories about how many times sexism in the maritime space has reared it's head against them. Particularly since both of them are extremely knowledgeable, experienced, and capable captains and how automatically dismissive many people are towards them.

As someone with three daughters, I love how many strong women role models my daughters have these days -- inside and outside the home!

Vernadsky - Ukranian research base

Britain established Faraday station in 1947 and then sold it to Ukraine in 1996 for the symbolic cost of one British pound. It was then renamed to Vernadsky research base.

By Lewnwdc77 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

While the base here did have a gift shop, it was closed and being used as temporary accomodations by some researchers (they were in the middle of shift turnover, so there were more people than normal at the base at the time we visited). So I assume they were inviting us over purely for the camraderie and interesting conversation.

I know this is more common in the boating world, but I still find it amazing how generous and hospitable people are in the maritime/adventuring world. I'm not sure what that says about my time spent in the capitalist tech world. (to be fair, people are still nice there, but it's more of a side-current than an in-your-face presence like I'm describing here)

Bill gates visited Vernadsky

Apparently Cath was invited to be there for this occasion but couldn't make it at the time.

Wall of heroes

The entire stairway was covered in these team photos going back into 40's and 50's of all the research teams who have staffed the base.

Here's the most recent crew

Oleksandr (in the middle) was so gratious the whole time, I had no idea he was the base commander.

The one and only

It was so cool to see Cath and Icebird represented in the station too. More than 20 years of visits! So amazing.

Family connections across time

Without divulging any private information, one of the crew stopped here, "No way!".

Turns out, the ship their father had served on in the Navy had stopped here at this base decades ago and had their plaque on the wall from all that time ago. Cool how family connections across time can happen in the remotest of places.

So many cool patches

Ukranian map in the base

This was sad to see, because it reflects a time before the (still-ongoing) Russian war.

At the entry of the crew lounge

This sign was posted outside of the base recreation/pool/hangout area. I thought was funny. I also think it's cool as a way of explicitly setting a social norm in a place that might otherwise have people from many different cultures. Though the fact that it's in English probably means that it's primarily intended for visitors? I wonder if there are more stories behind this.

Vinyl at the base

I didn't take many pictures in the lounge because of the sign above, but this was a cozy corner of the lounge. I love how vinyl is "coming back" into the hi-fi music space and bases like this are benefitting by sitting still.

My closet is much the same way, I'm now waiting for skinny jeans to come back in style so I don't have to do anything and can still be fashionable.

I bet you could form some kind of Koan (Zen meditation poem) about this kind of thing.

Cross bow for size

Keeping up with our Half-Life theme for this trip, here we find the cross-bow. Third lab on the left down the main hallway. Watch out for the penguins on the entry and make sure to park your dingy carefully (story still to come).

It was really cool seeing the research facilities here. The electromagnetic/atmospheric lab was particularly cool for a few reasons:

1. They described in some depth what they were doing (measuring the ionosphere and being near the magnetic pole makes this better in several ways)
2. They had some interesting electromagnetic measurement equipment, much of it constructed on the base so that they can repair/reconfigure it themselves.
3. Their desktop computers were nearby, and seeing all of their Windows programs took me back to my childhood (CD burning software, WinZip, etc).

Went over to Wordie house

Next to where we anchored, the Wordie house was one of the original outposts by the British and has been reconstructed (it was washed away in a tsunami in the 60's IIRC) to be how it was originally.

It felt quite cozy, with reading nooks, work studies, and a small workshop.

British bases across time

Antarctic living decades ago

Getting to use the Ukranian sauna

After visiting Wordie house, we rode the Dingy the 15 minutes back to the boat, but had 30-40 knot winds in our face with sleet and waves and splash over the bow that drenched us. It was probably my first taste of harsher weather on the trip and learned that my pants were not as water proof as I thought they would be.

Later that day, Cath had requested if we could use the sauna at the Ukraninian base. That sounded lovely, so around 4p five of us went back over to the base in the dingy (things had calmed a bit by this point).

What does one wear when you need to go through Antarctic dingy travel/weather, then walk through a Ukranian research base, then sauna and polar plunge? I think we all struggled with these new questions in our lives, but swimsuit with arctic outer wear on top and a towel was my best guess.

This next part I think will likely be better captured by the Wynn's in an upcoming video (especially since they have video), but I'll describe my tale of events here:

• First order of business: get to the sauna
• They told us to take the dingy over
• But we said we'd walk since it was a bit rough out there, and how hard could the walk be?
• Turns out the walk was through 75 meters of penguins... years of poop buildup, and skeletons/carcasses
• Slippery too
• Finally made it to the tiny little sauna all by itself on the top of some rock outcropping.
• As we get there, we see two leopard seals actively eating/killing penguins off the beach
• Go inside: none of the switches seem to do anything, even with Sasha reading the labels for us.
• But the sauna seems warm, so we go in. It's pitch black inside. Not even wave your hand in your face.
• Between conversation, only the muted sounds of the wind howling outside.
• Again surreal: to be in Antaractica, with new friends, at a Ukranian research base, in a pitch black sauna, surrounded by penguins as they are being actively hunted.
• Then we do two polar plunges with another sauna break in between
  • They way to the water is down some sketchy stairs, belaying by a rope the rest of the way into the same water the seals were (are potentially still?) hunting in
• Then we go back through Penguin poop and skulls into the Ukranian base where they inform us that our Dingy was parked incorrectly and was taking on water that was draining from their base.
• And not just any water, but the effluent from their waste water processing facility. (Good thing they saw this happening, and saved our dingy from sinking entirely)
• So we bale that out and go back to the ship.
• Then make Georgian dumplings as a crew (Hatki?) and play Hearts around the table

Here's a picture outside the sauna

Resident Evil - Antarctic Sauna

And inside the sauna.

It may look like a horror game, but it was wonderful!

Making Dumplings: a good post-sauna activity

Icebird hog-tied?

Here's how they tied Icebird up for the two nights we were here. There are two ropes in the stern (like a normal stern tie) and then two more (actually three for safety/redundancy) in the bow. All of them go up and around rocks. I guess hog tying is where you tie the legs of a hog together, so maybe not the best description of this maneuver, but I don't know what else to call it.

Kudos to Doug for doing a lot of scrambling on the rocks to get us tied up here though it was a team effort. I think at the time Chef had me in the bottom of a hold digging out some vegetables for dinner. This sounds like a simple procedure, but oh dear reader it was not. So many lines, boxes, crates, fenders and bag after bag of trash. All kept refrigerated by the Antarctic weather (thankfully) but still took a small team of us to manage.

Bananas acquired! Onions acquired!

A good shot of Steve and Doug here, happy Steve! Mike accidentally (successfully?) ducked the shot.