Classic Antarctica Voyage 7203 Day 2
Day 2 - January 31, 2012 - Drake Passage en route to Antarctic Peninsula
By Peter W. Damisch, Historian and General Naturalist
Co-ordinates: 
Classic Antarctica Voyage 7203 Day 2
Day 2 - January 31, 2012 - Drake Passage en route to Antarctic Peninsula
By Peter W. Damisch, Historian and General Naturalist
Co-ordinates: 58o 01’ S, 063o 54.5’ W
Weather: Sunny, good weather with virtually no whitecaps in the ocean
Air Temperature: 4o C / 39 o F
Pressure: 973 HPa
Wind: 45 km / hour
We’ve had a great start to the voyage with almost near perfect ocean conditions in this area of the world, south of Cape Horn, which can see a bit of storms from time to time. Throughout the day, the sea state became even more flat, easily handled by the Silver Explorer’s stabilizing fins.
As is often the case, I started out the day with a brisk walk on the outer deck. Deck 6 extends all the way around the ship, which provides a wonderful way to catch some fresh air as well as having the chance to see some of the graceful sea birds that trail behind the Silver Explorer. Today’s most numerous bird, early in the day, was the Wandering Albatross. This beautiful soaring animal is well known for both its long distance flying behavior as well as for having the largest wingspan in the world, which can reach up to 3.5 meters. I was also keeping a lookout for our first Cape Petrel also known as the Cape Pintado or ‘Painted Wing’. This beautiful and soaring bird will generally accompany us throughout our voyage from the southern tip of South America all the way down to the Antarctic Peninsula.
This first full sea day of the voyage initiates our professional presentation program. Our large, 11 person Expedition Team includes individuals with many decades of expertise in a wide range of topics including biology, botany, geology, glaciology, history, ornithology and more. We all have guided for many years and originally came from a variety of countries, including Austria, Canada, Colombia, Germany, Latvia, Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, United States and United Kingdom.
The first presentation was appropriately, ‘Ocean Wanderers – The Tubenoses’. Will Wagstaff, our world traveling expert on bird species, gave a wonderful overview regarding many of the sea birds that we hope to sea during our ocean transits. This includes multiple varieties of albatross, prion and petrels, each with their unique coloration, feeding, breeding and flying behavior. Of course just one great aspect of such a lecture is the ability to go directly outside immediately after completion and put new-found identification skills to use!
Later on in the morning, it was my turn to have a bit of fun with the history of the region with a presentation titled ’Search for the Unknown Continent’. I like to put people in a time machine to go back hundreds of years to look at the people along with their motivations and emotions, not focusing on dry facts or figures. In this case we spent some time looking at the very first explorers who care