Northanger Antarctic 2006 adventure

We're back!

2006-03-26T13:37:00.000-08:00

We're back!

The Drake is over...as soon as we see the famous Cape Horn I start feeling better and the big rolling swells diminish as we get amongst the islands at the very tip of South America. We give a few moments thought to all those who have perished rounding Cape Horn and feel hugely grateful for our safe passage.

We can smell the land and the green of the trees and shrubs is a feast for our deprived eyes. We spend the night anchored in a sheltered bay near Cape Horn - everyone abandons ship within about 10 minutes of anchoring to get on land and stretch our legs, savouring the solidness of the ground. Erik and I camp for the night - I can't stand the thought of another night in my bunk. We have a huge sleep, although Erik wakes in the night feeling his thermarest pitching and rolling under him!

The journey up through the channels is a fine mix of sunshine, hail, snow and wind with great sailing. We enjoy the colours and the change in wildlife in this relatively gentle environment, although the rapid weather changes keep us on our toes. We start to see signs of habitation, small fishing villages and then the slightly bigger town of Puerto Williams where we spend another night camping ashore in the beech forest. I eat ravenously, catching up on lost opportunities in the Drake.

As we approach Ushuaia we can hear the noise of traffic and the smell of burning fossil fuels - we have mixed emotions as always at the end of an adventure: sadness at it all being over but looking forward to sleeping in our own beds and enjoying the space of a house to live in rather than a small corner of a small boat! We feel immensely privileged to have been to Antarctica - it's still a land that feels unexplored and untravelled, where you can have some sense of being somewhere that few people, if any, have ever set foot. We hope you've got some of that sense from our writing - thanks for sharing our journey.

We wil be organising the writing from this blog and a few additional articles into a web site with some of our photos. We will let you know when it is done. Also, we will be giving slide shows to the Alpine Club and others so we will let you know of the dates and places.

Many thanks to those organisations that have made this journey possible:
New Zealand Alpine Club Expedition Fund
Watties
Cascade Designs
Silkbody
BackCountry Cuisine
R & R Sports Queenstown
Bivouac Christchurch
Macpac
Chocolate Fellman, Geraldine

Day 5 in the Drake

2006-03-22T17:44:00.000-08:00

It´s hard to believe I´ve spent a whole working week in the Drake. The experience can´t be described as enjoyable - bouncing around in continuous motion, never a rest from the pounding waves.

Sometimes it´s just disheartening, every wave we crash into stopping us in our tracks, reducing the passage home to a speed that I could crawl faster than.

Other times it´s amazing. At the crest of each wave the wind catches the sails, picks us up and throws us towards our destination. At night we are blasting towards Cape Horn on a ribbon of silver laid down by the moon.Sail changes are an exercise in sticky-footedness, trying to be useful on a heaving deck awash with water. Other moments are pure delight, such as the wandering albatross glowing orange in the light of the setting sun.As the days unfold Greg is playing a careful game of Chess, trying to manage our position so that we arrive at the Horn without getting a "spanking" - sometimes we hove-to, sometimes sailing west, someimes east. Below decks Bruce is a wonder in the Kitchen, producing a never-ending supply of gourmet delights. After the first day my stomach settled down enough to cautiously enjoy his cooking. Worryingly, Christine hasn´t eaten much for 5 days, let´s hope we make it before she fades away completely!

Erik

An inside view of the Drake

2006-03-21T13:11:00.000-08:00

The wind howls through rigging that creaks and groans under the strain of full sails. The boat heels steeply, footsteps thud across the deck, sails flap, a shackle bangs on the deck like a jackhammer just above my head. It's so loud I need to put my hand over my ear - in my top bunk my head is only a foot from the deck so I am intimate with all of the noises going on outside.

I am lying halfway up the wall - we are well heeled over on this tack and wedged between the wall and bunk is the most comfortable position. The boat thuds into something with a resounding bang, and stops for a microsecond. My eyes snap open, muscles tense, and my first thought is 'shit, an iceberg!'. Water pouring over the hatch above my head reminds me that we are no longer in iceberg territory and it is a big wave we have hit - water seems very solid at the speed we are traveling at.

The boat surges forward again as the wave sloshes on down the boat and out through the scuppers. Footsteps down the hatch and there are voices in the galley, resuming the conversation where it left off prior to the call for action. I close my eyes again and drift back into my state of semi-comatoseness induced by seasickness. Somehow, amidst all the noise and chaos I fall asleep...my dreams contain images of being in a house attacked by armies of people with battering rams...

Christine

Leaving the Antarctic

2006-03-21T13:03:00.000-08:00

Wine for diesel - not a bad trade for the people of the yacht Sedna, a millionaire's floating palace converted to a filming base by a group of enthusiastic Canadian wildlife documentary makers. They are having re-supply problems and all their wine is still in Argentina, much to their dismay!

We are invited for dinner and are in the zodiac armed with the ingredients to make Pisco Sours (a chilean cocktail) but lack some ice. Not a problem in the Antarctic, we slow down, lean over the side, pickup a small iceberg and race on.

On Sedna the Captain is the cook tonight, so in total 21 of us enjoy a great dinner around their large mahogany table. We toast them for their courage to spend the next 9 months wintering over in the Antarctic, and they us for our impending voyage across the Drake. Later we watch some of their wildlife footage - truly great from an inspirational group. Have a look at www.sedna.tv.

Next morning we wake early to decks slippery with ice and finish getting the boat ready for the Drake. Frozen ropes and sub-zero temperatures make for numb hands and hard work.

Off we sail, and are soon heeled over by strong winds and steep seas. It's hard not to be superstitious about what the future holds, the most dangerous part is as we approach Cape Horn where the sea shallows, the waves get bigger and the storms more concentrated. We have the latest technology of satelite photos and weather predicitions, it only helps to refine the guess of the future and not eliminate the risk!

Erik

Climbing in Paradise

2006-03-20T13:13:00.000-08:00

Recently when we get up in the morning the surface of the sea has an unusual wrinkliness to it. I was going to say like the wrinkly skin around an old man's eyes, however, I recently looked in the mirror and realised it looked like the skin around my eyes! The surface of the sea is beginning to freeze, telling us that it's time to go home - before our boat is locked into a frozen world until the next summer.

I am trying to squeeze in a few more climbs and adventures before our return home over the Drake. I manage to encourage Christine and Matt to venture out into dubious weather to climbing the peak leaning over the mooring at Paradise Bay. We climb glaciers and pitch up steep snow and ice in blizzards to reach the top just as the weather clears - one of the keys to Antarctic climbing is to be optimistic!

The next day Matt and I climb another peak on the opposite side of the harbour. It's an amazing experience to be roping up for a climb with penguins porpoising on the sea beside you, hearing the puff of a whale surfacing and watching icebergs float past.

While waiting for Greg and the dinghy I try doing a climb on a crag at the shore. Half way up the climb is a big shelf at nose height that requires a difficult move to mount it. The problem is that it is covered with about 2 inches of bird shit. I scrape it off looking for a hand hold and almost fall, plummeting down the cliff because of the stink -it is unbelievable. I think of my obituary - climber dies because he was not wearing breathing apparatus while climbing!

We try squeezing in a final climb, again with Matt and Christine. We camp on shore but wake to our tent buried by 15cm of snow. The rock looked amazing but is now plastered in snow - it's not going to happen, at least on this trip.

Looks like we (or me at least) are finding reasons for a return visit!

The ultimate irony

2006-03-12T11:55:00.000-08:00

My day starts in a snowy tent, biding time with Matt and Erik while we wait for the Northanger to pick us up. Somehow Matt has weaseled into the sleeping bag with Erik, while I am out in the cold! And even more rudely, they both fall asleep. snoring away, while I am reading them entertaining excerpts from Bill Bryson's "A walk in the Woods".

The day improves as we head north towards Enterprise Islands. The snow retreats and the sun comes out - we have a great tail wind and there is not much ice so we even get some sail up and turn the engine off. Greg is looking like the true crusty captain. Swenja is complaining that we haven't seen any whales, when suddenly Bruce spots a whale spout off the starboard. Next minute, giant humpback whales are launching themselves skywards, breaching with enthusiasm and, it seems, just for fun. The show goes on with breach after breach sending up explosive sprays of water as they hit the ocean, ramming home to us just how enormous these creatures are. The show finishes with two of them breaching at the same time - we are all beaming with amazement at the spectacle.

Not too long afterwards, we see more humpbacks, even closer to the boat. These aren't breaching but are much closer and we can see their blowholes as big as dinner plates. They roll over and wave their huge pectoral fins at us, then sound, sliding into the depths with their tails waving a last goodbye. In our 56ft boat we feel dwarfed and humbled by the size of these behemoths.

Awestruck, we continue in to our anchorage - we glimpse the wreck of a boat in the bay as we come closer. We pull right up to it, a rusting heap of an old whaler from the 1920s, 130ft long in its day but today we see only the bow poking out of the sea. It seems fitting that is in this state, Antarctic terns nesting and shitting on its bow, while the gentle giants it once hunted roam and frolic in the ocean nearby.

Things that go bump

2006-03-08T12:29:00.000-08:00

Something bumping into the boat always causes a spike of stress for a sailor, especially in the Antarctic. We are anchored at Booth Island and have 4 mooring lines to the shore in a star pattern with the boat in the middle - well braced in case there is a big blow.While we are preparing dinner a smallish iceberg (garden shed-sized above the water and an apartment below) floats slowly past and hooks on one of the mooring lines. Greg and I go on deck and have a look - not much to worry about, the thing is barely moving. What we don't notice is the stress building up on the mooring line, then suddenly ping, pop, bits of metal start flying off the winch as it begins to disintegrate under the strain. Greg starts swearing, we have to get out of here!I jump into the dinghy and begin taking in mooring lines, in the meantime the iceberg is under the back of the boat. I hadn't noticed it before but there is a slight swell, so now we have a 28 ton boat bouncing off a 50 ton iceberg - bang, there goes a bent bracket for the wind generator! It's getting serious, damage to the rudder is a sailor's worst nightmare and the lump of ice is right there. Haul in the anchor, start the engine and we move to safer ground.All this is happening on Greg's birthday, so while these dramas have been unfolding Keri has cooked a gourmet dinner. Not wanting to let it spoil we drop the anchor a few hundred meters further out. I'm on lookout and this time a big one is coming, maybe 300 tons, and its only 7 meters away! I jump in the dinghy, line up the iceberg and start revving the 14hp motor trying to shunt the thing out of the way. Not much happens for the first 5 minutes then I look back, maybe I have moved it a meter, another 20 minutes of revving and it's safely out of the way. Time for the gourmet dinner now!Sometimes the thing that goes bump is a bit more living. Greg and Matt are out placing mooring lines at Dorian Bay in the dinghy when suddenly a large grey-black object, longer than the dinghy, swims underneath. It rears its black head and looks poor Matt in the eye, as if to say 'you are my dinner'. It's a leopard seal, an animal that has a menacing combination of power and reptilian coldness, everything about it is intimidating. Leopard seals have a reputation of biting inflatable dinghies, meaning that you would be in the drink in seconds. Greg and Matt lose their nerve, gun the engine and race back to the safety of the steel-hulled boat. Just as they are getting near, the leopard seal sticks its head out between the incoming dinghy and the boat - it has overtaken a planing dinghy at 15 knots! It's a game of cat and mouse, the cat is a muscular, 1 ton top predator and the dinghy and contents are the mouse! Fortunately they make it back to the boat and Matt leaps on faster than I have ever seen. So whether you are about to have dinner, or about to be dinner, take notice of things that go bump!

Swimming in the Antarctic!

2006-03-08T12:25:00.000-08:00

Swimming in the Antarctic seemed like a good idea in a New Zealand summer at 30c, but once I was down here, with icebergs in the sea and a cold wind my bravado began to fail me. Then suddenly the time felt right.After Bruce and Matt's exploits on Una`s False Tits and Chris and my adventures on Mt Wandel, Swenja had brewed up an adventure up Mt Cloos. >From our research it is the highest peak that borders the Lemaire Channel and appeared to be unclimbed. The hardest part of the venture was to find a way off the boat that didn't involve hanging around under ice cliffs. Keri spotted the landing point and the Northanger abandoned us with several days` supplies.Matt, Bruce, Swenja and I headed off in the wet afternoon snow crossing sagging snow bridges to camp in yet another staggering location. The next morning everything had frozen and after two hours aerobic climbing we were on the summit - hard to believe it is a first ascent since it was so easy!We were back at the coast by lunch time and the climate felt positively mediterranean - providing you did not look at the towering snow-capped mountain reflected in the mirror-like sea, or notice the penguins porpoising about. So off with my clothes, push the icebergs away and in! Highly recommended, especially for people with a low IQ!Bruce had a bottle of bubbly from the boat cooling in the water so the afternoon was spent sipping wine, lying on the beach, soaking up the warm Antarctic sun and absorbing the wonderful views. I am now thinking it is wrong to assume that Scott and Shackleton were tough guys!

Demaria Peak

2006-03-06T13:27:00.000-08:00

We cruise out from our cosy anchorage at Vernadsky, waving to our Russian friends and admiring the tall ship anchored just off the base. It is a calm day with low misty cloud, very atmospheric as we pass through icebergs of all shapes and sizes. Demaria Peak looms out of the cloud and we all leap into action ready for a dash to the top, some welcome exercise after a couple of stationary days. We make it beyond the dive-bombing skuas and up the ridge, a couple of very exposed steps but otherwise a straightforward climb to another outstanding Antarctic view. We reckon we have notched up the world record for fastest ascent (Swenja is not great at being cooped up on a small boat) and the first ascent in shorts (by Erik). There is no wind on the top and we brew up a soup and take photos for our various sponsors. What a spot! The cloud comes in as we descend, as do the skuas - one making full contact with my head, a bit like getting a soccer ball full force in the face. No permanent damage though, just another wee snippet to add to the whole Antarctic experienceChristine

Three days in a penguin sewer

2006-03-05T12:31:00.000-08:00

Our campsite on Booth Island is not the best we've ever had - penguin and seal poo everywhere! However, it is convenient for our second trip up Mt Wandell. We have already dropped the piglets (Matt and Bruce) off for an attempt on an unclimbed buttress called False Cape Renard (but we have renamed Piglet 1). Now Greg, Keri and Swenja leave Erik and I in our poo camp. We are up early the next morning but the weather comes on to rain as we get a couple of hours up the ridge. The next day it rains more and the penguins provide our entertainment for the day.Finally the weather is good to us - a gorgeous clear morning, quite frosty but great for our mission. We stop to adjust my crampon and a curious juvenile Gentoo penguin approaches closer and closer, trying to work out what on earth we are. They are so comical it is hard not to laugh.We get beyond our previous point and the going gets harder - unstable blocks of rocks piled on top of each other. I look to my right as I scramble up, half expecting to see daylight through the blocks. I am gripped as Erik belays me across a narrow section of particularly wobbly rocks with a large steep drop on either side. More climbing up the steep ridge brings us to the snow, another moment of nerves for me as we traverse along a steep bit and abseil down to the glacier over a schrund. We wind through the crevasses and up to a large schrund close to the summit. The gap is too large to cross and time is marching on so we reluctantly turn for home.We decide to descend via our Chocolate Buttress route, safer and quicker we believe than back the way we came. All very well, but we have to get there first! Another few terrifying moments for me as we traverse a steep cheval to get to the top of the buttress. At least it is familiar ground now, and as the light fades we are confident of the route and abseil points. Five abseils later we are on the glacier at the bottom of the buttress, and wend our way back around the coast to our poo camp, rock-hopping through the high tide and sneaking around the penguin colony - they are as noisy as ever, in fact more so at night than during the day. Their honks and squawks finally fade as we fall exhausted into bed, another big day in the Antarctic.

The Ukraine visit

2006-02-26T12:27:00.000-08:00

Imagine 12 men, ranging in age from 21 to 50, stuck on a small island for 14 months. For 4 months of that time there is only 18 hours of daylight a month. Fortunately, this particular batch of men had only been at the Ukrainian base Vernadsky for a month so they hadn't gone too mad yet! I'd be a bit cautious visiting them in the early spring as a young blond female...They did have a few distractions - their science for one (some fascinating results from that later), a very good gym (with the standard naked women adorning the walls) and even a sauna with a ladder down into the icy ocean. Also the odd visiting yacht and cruise ship...but still a long time to be away from friends and family.In fact, we had a very fun night of pool (Ukrainian style) and drinks with them at their bar - Swenja in her short fluffy pink skirt inspired the 21 year old cook to change from his work garb into stunningly tight pinstripe pants and a pair of pointy winklepickers, plus a rather too large dousing of cologne. The young barman had a styling mohawk ending in an arrow and charming smile - unfortunately only a few of them could speak English and our Ukrainian is zilch so conversation was a little limited. However, a good time was had by all as far as we could tell!

Climbing a chocolate buttress

2006-02-24T19:01:00.000-08:00

Numb toes and hands, I'm climbing a steep granite crack, maybe grade 18 or 19. The odd snow flake flutters past - must be below zero. Below me I can see the waves breaking on the shore, there are icebergs with seals lolling around sleeping. The Northanger is anchored in a neighbouring bay eyeballing an iceberg - it's never easy climbing in the Antarctic.We are 400 metres up a granite wall that we have named the "Chocolate Buttress" after a cake Keri baked the previous night. With 7 pitches of solid climbing we have established what will become one of the classic climbs in the Antarctic Peninsula. To the Antarctic what the North buttress of Sabre is to New Zealand.Abseiling down is the usual drama with rope jamming and having to re-climb an overhanging roof in the growing evening gloom. We reach the snow at the base of the buttress and start clambering around the shore back to the boat as it gets dark (have about 6 hrs of dark at this time of year). The sea water is freezing onto the rocks as we wait for the surging waves to retreat so we can time our dashes around the coast. Someone jokes about not seeing the leopard seals until we trip over them. Later we sneak past sleeping penguins and find our tents - a good 18 hour day of great climbing.

Notching up the first climb!

2006-02-23T13:36:00.000-08:00

The summit of Savoia Peak (more impressively known as Mt Luigi de Savoia) looks like one of those out of balance ice-plastered peaks in Patagonia. Look at it from the right (or wrong) angle and it's quite phallic!After leaving the Northanger anchored in Port Lockroy we head up the Thunder Glacier and camp at the col dividing the island. Climbing Luigi is like climbing Mt Tasman except that the boat is at Plateau hight.The views from the summit are amazing with a deep azure ocean littered with brilliant white icebergs. Snow-capped peaks as high as Mt Aspiring rise out from the ocean. If you throw a snow ball it might even reach the boat moored in the harbour below.The next day we return to the boat in a following blizzard - breaks in the weather are short here but at least we have made good use of this opportunity.

After the Drake Passage

2006-02-16T19:07:00.000-08:00

We arrive at our first anchorage in the dark - I'm not on watch so I'm in my bunk but awake and listening to all the goings on. I hear Bruce navigating using the radar, calling out instructions to someone at the steering wheel. Then the anchor chain rattles outand eventually the engine goes off.When Erik wakes me at 4am for my watch I pop my head out of the hatch - it's light and right in my face is a big ice cliff only 50m away. We're anchored in a narrow channel, very sheltered from the weather and extremely dramatic. My job is to make sure we don't swing on the anchor and end up in the ice cliff or on the rocks on the other side. Fortunately there is little wind and we only swing gently with the breeze and current.We spend a day showering, exploring a little and catching up on jobs which we couldn't do while on the Drake. We are all a bit cabin feverish and keen to get out and do some aerobic exercise, although the options from here are pretty limited. Erik vents some energy on some boulders while I watch some humpback whales diving in the bay on the other side of the hill. We get dive-bombed by a skua whose nest we get a bit close too and muse at the 'floating hotel' drifting past the boat - it's a small iceberg with half a dozen very relaxed crabeater seals lounging out on it.The next day we head out to see if we can climb a 100m sea stack - it's a very impressive blade of rock in a stunning location with huge ice cliffs and glaciers behind, crashing surf around it's feet. Greg and Bruce go for a closer look in the zodiac and reach the conclusion that the swell is way too big to get anywhere near the thing. So that mission is off, but we are compensated with more humpback whales, this time right next to the boat. We also see orcas close in and the ubiquitous penguins porpoising along beside us.We head south towards an anchorage that has more options for exercise - we are eating and drinking well, time to do something about the waistlines! The weather is crap too - a good time for travelling. It is snowing and windy as we make our way through the channels, curiously shaped icebergs floating past looking like props out of a Peter Jackson movie.

Away at last

2006-02-08T11:33:00.000-08:00

Finally we are away, food, wine and gear packed. South-easterly wind coming up the Beagle Channel (very unusual). We do customs to leave Argentina and motor to Puerto Williams. Feels great to be under way as packing and organising is wearing thin.

Beech trees line the narrow inlet of Puerto Williams - looks similar to New Zealand but I can't quite work out where, like a cross between Stewart Island, Milford Sound and Nelson Lakes. We tie up to a rusting ex Chilean Navy vessel slowly sinking into the Patagonian mud that also serves as the wharf. The enterprising Chilean boat club has set up an amazing bar inside the rusting old boat. Student flat style furniture, steel floor on an angle that makes you feel drunk and a collection of many decades of memorabilia from explorers, adventurers and people seeking to escape from main stream society gives the place a great sense of style.

The next morning we wake feeling that we had one Pisco Sour too many - if I feel sick in the Drake passage I'll blame the booze not my lack of sea legs!

Fill up with fresh water then we are away - next stop the Antarctic. We leave the Beagle channel and head down Picton Sound running before a force 8 North-Westerly, making 7 knots with just the jib up. Cape Horn off the starboard bow and only 580 nautical miles to go.

Erik

Northanger - ice-strengthened donut

2006-02-04T06:07:00.000-08:00

You don´t need to look at the Northanger for long to realise it´s an unusual boat - it has a whole right through the middle, kind of like an elongated donut! Fortunately it still floats...and if anything, the hole in the middle is a bonus as it houses the retractable keel and also makes the boat extremely strong. This means we can get into safe/shallow anchorages where the nasty icebergs won´t get us.

It´s a ketch, which means it has two masts - always good to have a spare in case we lose one! It´s also ice-strengthened, well tested on Greg and Keri´s wintering over in Greenland. I suppose you could say we´re sailing to the Antarctic in an ice-strengthened donut!

It´s a well-stocked donut though, with endless nooks and crannies to store the copious amounts of cheese, wine and chocolate we have aboard (oh yeah, and we have a bit of real food too!).

Aside from that, it´s a bit like a cross between a cosy mountain hut and an 8 tonne caravan, with gas stove, bunks and small dunny. All in all, quite homely and a great vessel to get us where we want to go!

Today we are heading to Puerto Williams on the other side of the Beagle Channel in Chile. It will be a bit quieter there (no tourists other than us), and wil give us a chance to do the final few bits and pieces before Cabo de Hornas and the Drake Passage. Greg has threatened us with suppositories if we are too seasick so that should prevent us all from feeling even slightly queasy!

Erik and Christine

Ushuaia - ´´world end´´

2006-02-03T08:19:00.000-08:00

We find Greg at the Airport and the Northanger tied up at the wharf. The boat is ferrari red and Grey says that we have to sail fast to try and keep with the paint job. Inside is Keri with chocolates on the pillows and a warm Canadian accent. The boat sinks a bit lower in the water as we load our small mountain of climbing gear.

Now, to explain the two boat owners:
Grey is tall, lanky and with a permanent squint - probably from endlessly scanning the horizon for icebergs. Keri has the same iceberg on the horizon look, just not as pronounced - she is basically a Canadian hippie at heart with a great passion for adventure. They are like many couples, if it wasn´t for him they wouldn´t cast the ropes off the wharf, if it wasn´t for her casting the ropes off would be a disaster because they would have forgotten all the small stuff.

This evening the team is all together, drinking more red wine and eating pizza - if I`m to get up any mountains I need to find a more healthy diet!

The next day it´s as windy as hell (hurricane force) - Greg says it´s a good day to be in port and a bad day to be at Cape Horn! The wind is howling through the rigging and people lean at a steep angle along the causeway into town. We begin buying food by the trolley load - no starving here. The only problem is lack of quality chocolate - I hope Swenja can cope!

The wharf is an interesting place with about 15 round the world/Antarctic sailing boats. They are all built like "brick shit houses" - short masts, strong and functional. The goal of the boat is to be strong and beauty is not a consideration. The main languages on the wharf are french, english and spanish. The names of many of the people are somehow familiar - probably because many of them are sailing legends.

There are two single-handed round the world french sailors. Unfortunately falling in love and living on the same boat means their status of single-handed sailors is in doubt. I joke that if they each chopped a hand off then they could have as many crew as they like and still be considered single handed! I´m not sure the french understand kiwi humour!

Today it is calm and Ushuaia is beautiful. The mission for today is packing the food and buying the wine - 2 bottles per day for 40 days. Doesn´t sound like too much but apparently there are many days when we will be struggling to keep and food down so booze is off the menu.

Time to go sampling :-)

Erik

The beginning of the craziness

2006-02-03T07:55:00.000-08:00

We are finally on our way after many months of planning, people telling us we must be crazy and spending too much money on climbing gear.

The fun started before we even left New Zealand. The new, fancy camera I bought for the trip has re-invigorated my interest in photography, so while in Auckland Airport I wander into the Book Shop and ask if they have any books on photography. The very helpful Indian staffperson behind the counter yells across the crowded bookshop "can you find this guy some books on pornography"! I spend the next few minutes trying to explain that there is a difference and hoping that she will re-broadcast the correct message to the whole shop - I end up deciding the easiest way to sort out my embarrasment is just to leave the country! If that´s my experience in an english speaking country how the hell am I going to cope in spanish?!

After some frantic bag re-packing and a Swenja yoga session in the airport we are off to Buenos Aires. The taxi from the airport, hotel, and dinner is your normal travel fun. We meet up with Iris, friend of Nina´s who has most generously sorted out our hotel and gives us some advice on where to eat. We are all a bit tired, but about midnight Matt decides we need to go tangoing so we all jam into a taxi and bump off through some nice and not so nice parts of BA. The tango school is closed, I guess Tuesday night is not a very happening tango night, so we let the taxi driver find us somewhere else. It all looks a bit touristy so we skip that and drink some more good Argentinian red wine (excellent stuff!). At least we tried.

Tomorrow it´s off to Ushuaia to find the boat and escape the heat!

Erik

Hi there

2006-02-03T07:44:00.000-08:00

This is where you will find out about the adventures of the Northanger in its Feb/March 2006 Antarctic adventures. The crew are:

Greg - Boat owner/skipper - originally from Ashburton, NZ although has been sailing consistently for the last 15 years or so to amazing places.
Keri - Boat owner/skipper - from Canada, met Greg on an early trip to the Antarctic and has been sailing with him ever since, awesome photographer (see some of her photos later)
Bruce - From Wanaka, super-handyman, used to co-own Northanger and has sailed the Northwest Passage plus done a couple of Antarctic forays already.
Christine - From Queenstown, baby of the trip and dedicated wildlife enthusiast, useful for getting into small places (like boat lockers).
Erik - Also from Queenstown, finally getting to Antarctica after seeing his parents slides of it since he was 5, blogger extroadinaire.
Matt - From Christchurch, appointed fearless leader of the trip although denies having any responsibility
Swenja (aka The Princess) - From Wanaka, yoga guru, chocoholic, power-organiser and sponsorship queen

We´ll be updating this site every now and then via satellite phone from the Antarctic, which rules out photos, however we´ve got some of Keri Pashuk´s beautiful collection to give you an idea of what we´re seeing.

To view Northanger´s website and learn about some of their previous trips, go here http://www.northanger.com

Erik and Christine