so, where were we?
after the excitement of the ice field enclosing on us, i was on a bit of a high. We started moving to a new location for another landing, and saw this leopard seal sitting on a floating bit of ice, this was my first seal spot, was really hoping i would get to see more, especially as this was a flying visit.
i have no idea what this thing was on the ice, the black blob?
another stunning table iceberg.
looks like this was the edge of a glacier broken off and free.
can't remember the name of this bird, but they were everywhere around here, kind of illuminous at night too.
now you can start to see the sea getting a bit more choppy, we had entered the Brunsfield straight, another bit of dodgy water, and the boat was starting to rock.
this was the edge of a glacier, we saw plenty of these.
literally looked like we were crossing the line between bad and good weather here
it was a bit of a red herring though, we went to dinner, and now is probably a good time to talk about food.
So, if you've ever been on a cruise, you will know what i'm talking about, but the food is amazing, and theres lots of it. For breakfast we had a massive spread with all the usual suspects, all you can eat. Then at lunch, it was a buffet, a different theme each day and always very nice, the desserts were fabulous too, chocolate mousse! Then the evening meal was usually a choice of about 5 things, and then if you didn't fancy that, there was always a filet steak, so not a bad backup plan! the food was like being in a michelin starred french restaurant every night. We also had the option of room service, 24/7, at no cost. to say the burgers got a hammering from our group is an understatement, apparently they went through 20x what they normally do, they were really shocked, they had to get extra stock off the sister ship when we met up! the burger was nice, i only had 1 or 2 when i didn't feel like having a full restaurant meal.
Anyway, so we went to dinner, and i was sitting in the centre of the boat pretty much, the restaurant spanned the ship at the back, and was a low level, so was just above the water line, with big windows either side. it was a great view if you sat next to the window, amazing even. But this night (well i say night but it was broad daylight), we were happily enjoying the meal when this loud noise could be heard, like we were scraping against something, and then the boat started listing, like so far over that the windows one side of the boat were completely under water, there was crockery smashing all over the place and the waiters looked really worried.......
People shat themselves, thinking were going down, we basically looked at each other and thought, this is it, but what a way to go!!!!
Then the boat righted itself, and that was it, we carried on. The staff wouldn't tell us anything other than it was normal, normal, with all that smashed crockery and glass? Anyway, we were dying to know what went on, and the following night i was on the bridge, and asked the captain what happened and how close we were. He basically said that we were going through an ice field, making progress
and he spotted an iceberg and just needed to weave around it, like an animal in the road or something, and we leant over about 5 degrees, 7 max. WHAT, all we experienced was 5 degrees????? So i asked him how far the boat could go before it got into trouble, he said the boat has never been past 10 degrees, even on the really rough crossing they had before, and that the boat could handle 55 degrees (pretty sure it was that figure, it was there a bouts), so we had 5 and it can handle 10x that! we really felt a bit silly then, but at the time, we'd never experienced anything like it, and with the smashing glasses, and the staff looking worried, we really thought it was worse than it was.
So this then happened quite a few times afterwards, but now we knew the score, we actually got to quite enjoy it, like we were now experienced sailors. I personally thought i was going down lol, strange experience!
