The Day and Night before the Race

Friday February 26^th, 2005

We awoke to an amazing sight of land all around us, with soaring peaks covered in snow against a black lava flow background. After breakfast, we all bundled up in most of the cold weather clothing we had to make the Zodiac crossing to land on the island.

Temperatures were not bad, right about 1c, just above freezing with again little to no wind. The Zodiac ride was not bad, just about 5 minutes or less. When we landed on the beach, we all had to have on our waterproof “Wellingtons” or gum/rubber boots, as we would disembark directly into several feet of water before walking up the beach, this turned out to be no problem for us.

Upon landing, the first thing we saw were several fur seals napping about 50 meters from us on the shore along with a colony of penguins and a small flock of Scuar birds in a tiny pond. Deception Island held a whaling colony from around 1910 through 1930’s and it is all abandoned now. What were interesting were the old whaling buildings still there and in pretty good shape except over the years that had been volcanic eruptions from the sea and mudslides from the mountains surrounding the low areas near the sea.

We also hiked a good mile or so to the abandoned aircraft hanger and could imagine where the runway once stood. There was also a graveyard that had been covered with mud many years ago, but there were two good graves, one marked by a death in 1928 of a Norwegian carpenter. There was also a nearly full whale skeleton just a few yards up on the beach. We could get pretty close to the penguins and seals, and they were totally unafraid of humans it turned out.

One of the highlights of the excursion there were three older women who went “swimming” just off the beach in the sea. It turns out that there are volcanic steam vents bubbling hot water into the shallow seawater, which made it somewhat sort of lukewarm there. It was quite a sight to see these three somewhat eccentric women stripping down to their bikinis and frolicking in the water. They were led by the Queen Eccentric – Della – who is well known to us by her extreme outfits of multi-colors and interesting decorated tights. Della is 69 years old and appears to be an adventure nut that also happens to run marathons, go figure!

We will have an Italian buffet lunch today to help us with our carbo-loading. All anyone could say is that we wish this weather for tomorrow as well. Very cloudy, little wind and temperatures just above freezing. We will see how it is tomorrow for the race.

During the afternoon we sailed to a place called Half Moon Bay Island where again we took Zodiacs out to the island. This was a truly fantastic wildlife place. There were a large number of Chinstrap Penguins (so called because they have a thin black line under their chins like from a helmet) as well as large numbers of grey Fur Seals all over the place. We hiked for a long way up a small hill and back down close to the beach. None of the animals were scared of us, but we all mostly kept our respectable distance. The penguins are no more than 3 feet high and can only really waddle/jump from one step to another like they are afraid of falling over. Their colors of black, brown and white blend in perfectly with the ancient rock formations and snow on the ground.

This bay was surrounded by massive glaciers on all sides shining with the iceberg/glacier blue in the middle as well as strange rock formations. We also saw one Weddell Seal at the end. He was much bigger than the others and he was resting happily on the rocks.

The weather was again very cooperative with temperatures a couple of degrees above freezing, cloud cover, but no wind, rain or snow. We keep hoping that this weather will continue for just one more day – the race – but somehow many of our doubtful.