Antarctica -- October-November 2010

Magdelena Island (Isla Magdelena in Spanish). This is in the Strait of Magellan.

This shot is included to show how the small boats brought people ashore at this landing. I believe this was the only place (other than towns) where there was a dock. However, this "dock" was not something the ship could come up to, only the small boats could appraoch this dock.

There were 5 of the small boats, each (usually) carrying a maimum of 8 passengers. They divided the passengers up into six groups (with the divisions largely by the languages the passengers spoke). At the first landing, Group One went first. At the next landing, Group Two went first, and so on. There were exceptions for various reasons, but it worked out OK over the course of the trip. (If you do the math, with five boats, six groups, and eight passengers per boat, it doesn't come out to 200 passengers, but I think that allowed them to have a boat free for other uses at times during the landings.)

Once we were in Antarctica, they were supposed to be limited to having100 people on shore at any one time. This was another reason for dividing the passengers into groups for ferrying people over for the landings. Most of the people from the early groups would be back on the ship before the later groups went ashore. As best I could tell, this seemed to work itself out. If anyone from the expedition staff was counting the number of people on land, or tracking how long any speciifc individual had been on land, it was not evident to me. The limit of 100 on land seemed to be treated more as a guideline than something rigidly adhered to.

The large passenger ships that go to Antarcitca (such as the Holland American cruise ships, with room for perhaps 1800 passengers), apparenlty do no landings, they just curise past the various locations. It's clear that landing 1800 people, with no more than100 (or even "about100") allowed on land on land at any one time, would probably require them to spend two days at any one landing location (although, of course, that far south, in summer, the days were VERY long).

I have memory of hearing that after the 2011-12 season, the large ships (like 1200 or 1800 passengers) were no longer going to be permitted to even enter the Antarctic, The reason for this (as I recall) stemmed from an incident. a few years earlier than when I was there in 2010, where a small cruise ship had sun (with the passengers escaping in lifeboats and being rescued). That incident had made them realize that there were so few other ships in the region that (if large ship had sunk) the number of people in lifeboats could overwhelm the capacity for other ships to pick them up. Thus (in certain situations) people might have to spend several days in lifeboats, which, in itself, could lead to lives lost (in the lifeboats) in extemely bad weather conditions. Having relayed this story here, I was surprised to notice (a few days ago -- as this is written in early 2013) a cruise line brochure mentioning a large-ship cruise to the Antarctic Pennisula.

These were called Polar Cirkel boats, which seemed to be a brand name.

(22 Nov 2010)

Magdelena Island.

Note penguins on beach in foreground.

A small Polar Cirkel (landing craft) boat is pulling up to the island’s dock in the middle distance. This is what they called a dry landing (did not have to step into shallow water upon leaving the boat). Once in On this island, and everywhere in Antarctica, there were no docks that could handle the Fram. The Polar Cirkels (sic) were pontoon boats with outboard motors, roughly similar to Zodiacs.

The background may give some idea of how steeply the land went up from the rocky beach.