Almost There

Well, we are now only three days away from our arrival at McMurdo. It turns out that despite the news about the Russian icebreaker stuck in the ice, our route is unusually ice free. We should be able to sail straight down to the base with no help from an icebreaker whatsoever. As such, we are due to arrive in McMurdo on the afternoon of January 26. We are currently 18 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time, so that would make it sometime on the evening of the 25th for those of you back home.

Well, Murphy's Law found me even all the way down here in the Southern Ocean. My Nikon D60 is nothing special, but it's a decent little DSLR. Two nights ago I decided to go out and take some pictures of the beautiful sunset (also cool because it was 9:45 PM and the sun was just setting.) After about five pictures, the shutter mechanism locked up, rendering the camera useless. After six years of use with no issues, the camera decided to break down when I am days away from a once in a lifetime experience on the most remote continent on Earth. Well, I fortunately had my point and shoot camera with me at the time, so I still got pictures of the beautiful sunset.

After a night spent thinking about the stupid camera, I decided that I had nothing to lose at this point, so I took the camera apart. Yes, I decided to disassemble my camera. So, 35 little tiny eyeglass screws and several hours later, I had the camera apart. Somehow, I managed not to break anything in the process. So, I lubricated all the little tiny plastic wheels for the shutter mechanism, and the camera seemed to be working again. I put the entire thing back together, and miraculously, it seems to be working fine. Hopefully the repair will hold until we're done in Antarctica!

For the past week or so, we have had some interesting birds following the ship as we get closer to land. I decided that photographing these birds would be a good test for my newly repaired camera, so I went out last night and spent some time taking pictures of the birds. And, after 500 shots, the camera was still going strong, so I'm pretty happy.

Last night was the last night that the sun will actually set until we head north again. So naturally, I had to take some photos of the sunset. It's probably the only time I'll ever see a sunset at 10:45 PM!

So, like I said, we are getting close to Antarctica. Even though there isn't a lot of pack ice this year, there are still some icebergs out there! We saw our first two icebergs today, and I'm told that they will become more plentiful as we get closer. The first iceberg was five miles away from the ship, and the second was about two miles away. Below are some of the pictures that I was able to get. For those of you who are my friends on Facebook, I have shared the photos that the Chief Engineer took of the icebergs. He has a really nice camera with a huge telephoto lens so he was able to get some incredible pictures. 

Well, I think that about covers it for now. Hopefully we will see some more icebergs and other cool stuff tomorrow so I can post some pictures of that! In case any of you are interested, I have posted a link on the blog from McMurdo. They have a webcam pointed at the ice pier, so you should be able to see when we arrive!