Antarctic Peninsula
Photography, Wildlife, and Sea Kayaking
November 23rd, 2024 to December 19th, 2024
Starting and ending point: Ushuaia, Argentina
Highlights of the trip
Sail to the White Continent with a small group of passengers that will enhance your experience.
Only 6 fellow travelers in Antarctic spring time.
Be a front row witness to mating display and nest building on the penguin rockeries.
Countless photographic opportunities with deep blue iceberg and midnight sunsets.
Jump into a kayak as many times you wish or spend a night ashore camping.
Expedition introduction
This is your chance to experience Antarctica as one of just 7 explorers aboard a thoroughbred sailing yacht, where you will be in awe of spectacular scenery and amazing wildlife within one of the last wildernesses on earth. As a small flexible group we can tailor-make our adventures and adapt itineraries to satisfy even the most seasoned adventure traveler. A cruise to Antarctica to see its dazzling landscapes and plentiful wildlife should be on everyone’s “to-do” list, but this adventure simply beats them all!
Itinerary
DAY 1
Come aboard, stow your gear, and take in the briefings, as we set sail down the spectacular mountain lined Beagle Channel toward the famed Drake Passage.
DAY 2
Depending on weather windows, we head out into the Drake Passage to commence our 550nm ocean passage, where landfall will be the snow, rock and ice of the Antarctic Peninsula. We are sailing the “furious fifties” with landfall in the “screaming sixties”, but thankfully the ‘state of the art’ weather systems aboard Spirit of Sydney enable us to negotiate the deep lows the Drake Passage is legendary for. Often we are able to choose weather windows that provide a safe, comfortable, and fast passage across- and you’ll find that with the routine of watches at sea, the time passes quickly.
Perhaps your first impressions of Antarctica will make you feel that you have entered an alternative reality!
Our arrival in Antarctic waters is heralded by porpoising penguins and the fantastical shapes of weird and wonderful icebergs, with anchorage perhaps at Whaler’s Bay in the sunken caldera of volcanic Deception Island – home to 300,000 pairs of bustling, noisy chinstrap penguins.
As we enter Port Foster through the narrow Neptune’s Bellows the sunken caldera opens before us, and we sight the remnants of what was once a bustling whaling industry at the turn of last century, with fleets of whale catchers and factory ships anchored in the harbor and more than a few interesting anecdotes and shenanigans to relate! Perhaps we’ll wash off the last few days at sea with a dip in the volcanic hot springs at Pendulum Cove where steam rises eerily from the shore obscuring the dark brooding volcanic landscape.
A six hour traverse over the island to Bailey’s Head is rewarded with stunning views of the sea cliffs and “Sewing Machine Needles” rock formations, and the incredible sight of penguins as far as the eye can see. At Baileys Head you can watch the chinnies surf in on to the black sand beach and pop out walking on their two feet!
Days 6 to 20
Our next days merge into each other as we cruise the relatively sheltered waters of the Antarctic Peninsula, exploring the wild and beautiful landscape and fascinating plethora of animal life. Now’s your chance to take to the kayaks out and slip along the side of an iceberg as lazy crab-eater seals plop into the water beside you, or perhaps to just drift along, wondering at the sheer immensity of the glacier wrapped mountains that loom over you. Perhaps you’d like to take the snow-shoes and hike up a snow hill to take in the view that literally extends for 50 miles or more in the clear crisp Antarctic air.
Paradise Harbour, Lemaire Channel, Neumayer Channel – all offer dramatic scenery, but we will have the chance to cruise these and many other less visited places, in depth. The chance to see this “Last Paradise” as part of a small and flexible group offers opportunities for adventures that are beyond the realms of travel by any other means.
As an independent yacht we are able to visit tiny coves and shallow anchorages where one can enjoy the magnificent solitude of one of the most remote places on earth, while watching close-up the antics of the local inhabitants, curious leopard seals, playful humpback whales, or frenetically busy penguins. You are part of the landscape – and we have the time and flexibility to stop and enjoy it.
This is an expedition and you are a participant. As we sail through spectacular islands and straits you may take the helm or climb the mast to look for leads in the ice. Imagine yourself as one of the first visitors, early explorer or whaler, pushing into new territory, dwarfed by the awesome majesty of the landscape, and astonished by the amazing wealth of animal life.
We head through the Penola Straits, which were named by Australian John Rymill of the winemaking family when he led the British Graham Land Expedition in 1932, and we pass close under the base of towering Mt Scott before slipping into Pleneau Bay often described as the ‘Iceberg Graveyard’, where currents and shallow water combine to trap and break up the ice monoliths. It makes for interesting zodiac cruising, when the spectacle of hundreds of tons of ice grinding on the sea floor is likely to explode into fragments. It’s also a favorite spot for family pods of orcas to hunt the crab-eater seals lazing on the floating sea ice.
We spend the night tucked into a narrow rocky channel out of the way of the ice and our backdrop is the towering peaks of Booth Island often lit up in the Antarctic sunsets that literally last for hours at this latitude.
The famed Lemaire Channel is home to dark, majestic waters overhung by precarious seracs and snow cornices that make us hesitant to sail too near the rocky cliffs. We breathe a sigh of relief as we pass Cape Reynard (otherwise known as ‘Eunice’s titties’ after the secretary of a Falklands Islands Dependencies Governor!) and set our sails for a brisk sail across the Gerlache Strait to the Peltior Channel.
As we cruise down the spectacular channel the Fife Mountain Range looms over our starboard hand. We drop our anchor under the ice cliffs at Port Lockroy and visit the English historic base that was pivotal in the days of early exploration and of fascinating Operation Tabarin, a secret wartime initiative to counter Nazi intelligence. The antiquated risqué paintings of 1940’s temptresses seem demure by today’s standards!
We head round to Dorian Bay and take a snow shoe walk up onto Harbour Glacier where the panorama includes: Thunder Glacier to the north, with the Fife Brothers range towering above, Jabet peak to the west, and across the Neumayer Strait – snowy Mount Francais (the highest peak on the peninsula at 2760m) rises majestically above all else.
Days 21, 22, 23
After a couple of exciting weeks cruising, exploring, kayaking, camping, we begin to watch for a weather window to sail back across the Drake and make a possible sailor’s ‘Rounding of the Horn’.
Day 24
Our first night in ‘Civilization’ will be a de-brief in Ushuaia where a ‘pisco sour’ or two will help provide a fitting ambience to celebrate the end of a fabulous adventure.
A return to relative civilization, but Ushuaia’s claim to ‘el Fin del Mundo’ will leave you skeptical, as like most people who travel to Antarctica, you will be forever haunted by the landscapes and thriving inhabitants of ‘that other world’ that lies to the South, bound by ice but rich in life.