9 Dec 25 - Antarctica 25 - Sailing North In The Drake Passage

It turned out to be a more start to the first full day at sea heading North in the Drake Passage. Pippa's morning wake up call said there were fifty knot winds coming from the North East. Typically, Oceanwide Expeditions expect the winds to be South Westerlies. I spent most of the day looking from inside the shelter of the bridge. The sea conditions were generally OK, with a sea state of five and a three metre swell. However, there were some occasions when we plunged further into a trough and the waves broke over the bows. These occasions were good for photographic images, but they were the exception, rather than the norm. Given the sea conditions, it was disappointing to only see one Whale blow all day.

Every now and then Ortelius would go into a deeper trough: This was typical of the waves on this occasion. They weren't a big problem, but for obvious reasons the bows were closed to everybody

Occasionally, we hit the waves badly and the spray hit the bridge

I saw a reasonable selection of Seabirds during the day. However, I didn't take many photographs from the bridge.

Light-mantled Sooty Albatross: This monotypic species breeds from South Georgia to Macquarie, Antipodes & Campbell Islands

White-chinned Petrel: This monotypic species breeds on South temperate & Subantarctic oceans North of the Antarctic Convergence from the Falkland Islands to New Zealand's outlying islands. They range widely in the Southern Oceans

Aside from Expedition staff meetings, there was generally one or two members of the Expedition staff watching from the bridge: On this occasion, we had four from the team: Saskia, Jess, Beth & Gary

The sea state calmed a bit later in the day, but sadly, this didn't improve the Cetacean sightings.