Sinking Ship

Today a ship similar to the one I took to Antarctica sank in an area not far from where I traveled last February. In fact I think I saw that very same ship at anchor in Ushuaia. Now I feel more like an adventurer than ever before. And there but for the grace of God…..

It has been frustrating getting updates on the news, but I had fun reading the various reports, all pretty much a repeat of an apparent AP news story. The numbers of passengers varied somewhat from story to story, but basically it reported around 91 passengers and 54 crew being evacuated from the sinking ship. The ship I was on, the M/S Andrea, accommodated about the same number of passengers. The Explorer has a max capacity of 108 persons according to one site I visited.

Weather was definitely colder at minus 5 degrees Celsius for this bunch. I had much better weather in February, usually just above freezing, although we did encounter some light snow at one time. I found that exciting. Our landing below the Antarctic Circle was actually the warmest day ashore that we had had. (We were the first tour of that season to get far enough south to cross that line.)

I thought the following comments from viewers on the situation were funny:

dahn_boehner wrote:

Why did Bush let this iceberg get off course?

SF_Mike wrote:

What the Church of Global Warming devotees either don't know or aren't telling you is with all the hysteria about polar ice melting in the Arctic, that the ice cap is thickening in the Antarctic. I guess these passengers discovered that first hand. Glad they were rescued safely. Cheers.

Another post:

Let me see if I've got this straight. A bunch of rich liberals pay big money to go on an "ecological" tour of the Antarctic to see firsthand the effects of man's brutality toward our environment, using copious amounts of fossil fuel to do so. Aforementioned vessel strikes iceberg and sinks, polluting fragile Arctic eco-system with aforementioned fossil fuels from fuel tanks of sunken vessel. Oh, the humanity! I find this absolutely hilarious!

My comment: I am not rich and I am not a liberal, but there are kernels of truth in that last post. I was disturbed by the smelly exhaust from the outboard motors on our zodiacs. It was definitely offensive in that pristine environment. Otherwise the operators of the expeditions were extremely careful to enforce ecological discipline. For example, we had to wash our boots before leaving the ship to land on any of the places we visited. And we also had to wash them immediately upon re-entering the ship so as not to transport any possible contamination from one land to another. In order to accomplish decontamination, we had to walk through trays of disinfectants. And those who had walking sticks also had to decontaminate them.

Anyway, when you see the news of the sinking ship, think of me. I could just as easily been on that ship as on the one I took.