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| Fifteen landlubbers laid low by sea sickness as expedition gets under way | Fifteen landlubbers laid low by sea sickness as expedition gets under way |
| (about 11 hours later) | |
| Four flights, five days and almost 12,000 miles from home, at 2pm local time in Bluff, the southernmost port in New Zealand, I joined 47 other passengers aboard the MV Akademik Shokalskiy and set sail for Antarctica. By 3pm, many of the people aboard were already feeling queasy and had taken to their beds. | Four flights, five days and almost 12,000 miles from home, at 2pm local time in Bluff, the southernmost port in New Zealand, I joined 47 other passengers aboard the MV Akademik Shokalskiy and set sail for Antarctica. By 3pm, many of the people aboard were already feeling queasy and had taken to their beds. |
| The ship captain sounded a horn as soon as we cleared the docks at Bluff, and a group of us watched from the observation deck, directly above the bridge, as the Shokalskiy slipped through the calm waters of the channel at Bluff and open ocean. I tweeted and sent short videos of people waving goodbye while I still had a few bars of phone signal left - the last outside contact we would get for a while. But just 10 minutes in, the lurching of the ship from side to side and front to back was causing trouble for many of us who had, minutes before, been cheering with excitement. | The ship captain sounded a horn as soon as we cleared the docks at Bluff, and a group of us watched from the observation deck, directly above the bridge, as the Shokalskiy slipped through the calm waters of the channel at Bluff and open ocean. I tweeted and sent short videos of people waving goodbye while I still had a few bars of phone signal left - the last outside contact we would get for a while. But just 10 minutes in, the lurching of the ship from side to side and front to back was causing trouble for many of us who had, minutes before, been cheering with excitement. |
| I had been warned, many times, about the sea-sickness. Several hours before the ship left port, I had stuck a patch behind my ear, as recommended by a pharmacist in Invercargill, where we had been staying for the past week to make final preparations for the trip south. A lot of Antarctic expeditions leave from this city and the pharmacist near my hotel was used to giving out advice for people about to head into the Southern Ocean. | I had been warned, many times, about the sea-sickness. Several hours before the ship left port, I had stuck a patch behind my ear, as recommended by a pharmacist in Invercargill, where we had been staying for the past week to make final preparations for the trip south. A lot of Antarctic expeditions leave from this city and the pharmacist near my hotel was used to giving out advice for people about to head into the Southern Ocean. |
| In his shop he had half a dozen types of pills that could be used by different people for different types of sea sickness. Which one was best depended on trial and error, he said. The only certainty seemed to be that preventing sea sickness was far better than trying to cure it after it had started. The skin patch, a lot of people had told me, was a surefire solution. Stick it to the bare skin behind your ear and the medication inside diffuses through into your system over three days to ward off the nausea. | In his shop he had half a dozen types of pills that could be used by different people for different types of sea sickness. Which one was best depended on trial and error, he said. The only certainty seemed to be that preventing sea sickness was far better than trying to cure it after it had started. The skin patch, a lot of people had told me, was a surefire solution. Stick it to the bare skin behind your ear and the medication inside diffuses through into your system over three days to ward off the nausea. |
| Lying in my bunk with a swirling head, merely two hours from port, I wasn't sure that the advice had been so useful. Even when I closed my eyes and focused hard on keeping things still, I wasn't sure that my head wouldn't just swim off at some point. I tried getting up a few times when I thought the nausea had subsided but my head had other plans, offering me two options within 30 seconds of being vertical: vomit or go lie down again. My colleague Laurence tried to film the sickness sweeping the ship but didn't manage for more than 10 minutes before the images of the rolling ocean in his viewfinder proved too much and he had to dash to the nearest toilet. This happened twice. | Lying in my bunk with a swirling head, merely two hours from port, I wasn't sure that the advice had been so useful. Even when I closed my eyes and focused hard on keeping things still, I wasn't sure that my head wouldn't just swim off at some point. I tried getting up a few times when I thought the nausea had subsided but my head had other plans, offering me two options within 30 seconds of being vertical: vomit or go lie down again. My colleague Laurence tried to film the sickness sweeping the ship but didn't manage for more than 10 minutes before the images of the rolling ocean in his viewfinder proved too much and he had to dash to the nearest toilet. This happened twice. |
| The Southern Ocean is well-known for being rough. The area around the New Zealand coast, which takes about a day to sail through, has relatively shallow waters of only around 200 metres and so it can get choppy very quickly. The Shokalskiy seemed to bob through these waters like a cork - I've seen metronomes that moved from side to side less than the mast at the back of the ship moved across the horizon on the first afternoon. | The Southern Ocean is well-known for being rough. The area around the New Zealand coast, which takes about a day to sail through, has relatively shallow waters of only around 200 metres and so it can get choppy very quickly. The Shokalskiy seemed to bob through these waters like a cork - I've seen metronomes that moved from side to side less than the mast at the back of the ship moved across the horizon on the first afternoon. |
| Walking around the ship in the hours after departure had been like trying to race across a bouncy castle. The walls and floors seemed to move in unexpected directions and, with no view of the outside world in the lower decks of the ship, it seemed as though gravity itself had decided to start playing games – disappearing for a moment or two as I descended a flight of stairs or becoming twice as strong as I walked carefully along the ship's narrow corridors, holding onto any railing I could find. | Walking around the ship in the hours after departure had been like trying to race across a bouncy castle. The walls and floors seemed to move in unexpected directions and, with no view of the outside world in the lower decks of the ship, it seemed as though gravity itself had decided to start playing games – disappearing for a moment or two as I descended a flight of stairs or becoming twice as strong as I walked carefully along the ship's narrow corridors, holding onto any railing I could find. |
| The nausea and discomfort was a fitting start to our expedition, though. Douglas Mawson – the Antarctic explorer who is the inspiration for this trip – suffered terribly from sea sickness in the first few days of the original Australasian Antarctic Expedition and he spent a lot of time in his cabin on the journey to the ice at the tail end of 1911. He was doubly unlucky because his ship, the Aurora, was struck by severe storms. His diaries, a meticulous record of the expedition even during his later tragic trek with Xavier Mertz and Belgrave Ninnis, are noticeably sparse in the first few days after his ship left Hobart in Tasmania. | |
| Heading further south, expedition leader Chris Turney said we should expect worse weather. The "furious 50s" and "screaming 60s" are the the strong westerly winds across the Southern Hemisphere at those latitudes, named by the old trawlers, whalers and sealers who used to work in the ocean. These are the equivalent of the pervasive westerly winds in Europe but, because there's very little, if any, land at these latitudes in the south, the winds circulate around Antarctica almost uninterrupted and can build up phenomenal speeds. The result is that the oceans get very choppy. | Heading further south, expedition leader Chris Turney said we should expect worse weather. The "furious 50s" and "screaming 60s" are the the strong westerly winds across the Southern Hemisphere at those latitudes, named by the old trawlers, whalers and sealers who used to work in the ocean. These are the equivalent of the pervasive westerly winds in Europe but, because there's very little, if any, land at these latitudes in the south, the winds circulate around Antarctica almost uninterrupted and can build up phenomenal speeds. The result is that the oceans get very choppy. |
| Even the scientists who had made the Southern Ocean crossing to Antarctica many times before had decided to take it easy on the first day. Their first of many planned experiments – surveying plankton at the ocean surface and throwing sophisticated probes overboard to continuously measure sea surface temperatures, salinity and pH – were all planned to start tomorrow. | Even the scientists who had made the Southern Ocean crossing to Antarctica many times before had decided to take it easy on the first day. Their first of many planned experiments – surveying plankton at the ocean surface and throwing sophisticated probes overboard to continuously measure sea surface temperatures, salinity and pH – were all planned to start tomorrow. |
| Fortunately, I had back-up sea-sickness pills, which were meant for emergency use since they induced drowsiness and were not conducive to a productive working day. After five hours at sea and hearing more than a few people rush to the toilet to throw up, however, I gave in. My skin patch just wasn't up to the job. As billed, my eyelids drooped soon after. But, when all that staying awake involved was trying to breathe slowly, keep down lunch and calculate the number of days until I could get off the boat and onto a surface that did not keep shifting, it was a very welcome slumber. | Fortunately, I had back-up sea-sickness pills, which were meant for emergency use since they induced drowsiness and were not conducive to a productive working day. After five hours at sea and hearing more than a few people rush to the toilet to throw up, however, I gave in. My skin patch just wasn't up to the job. As billed, my eyelids drooped soon after. But, when all that staying awake involved was trying to breathe slowly, keep down lunch and calculate the number of days until I could get off the boat and onto a surface that did not keep shifting, it was a very welcome slumber. |
| Highlight of the day: Finding the biscuit barrel in the bar that, I'm told, is kept filled 24 hours a day | Highlight of the day: Finding the biscuit barrel in the bar that, I'm told, is kept filled 24 hours a day |
| Lowlight of the day: Sea sickness | Lowlight of the day: Sea sickness |
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