Whale Season in Antarctica
Have you realized the size of a Humpback Whale swimming gently next to your zodiac? This is the perfect expedition to find out!
Join us in this amazing journey to the Antarctic Peninsula when marine mammals are at the peak of their activity. This is an adventure on board a polar sailing boat that carries only 5 passengers.
Highlights
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Small expedition always guaranties you a more personalized encounter with the wildlife
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Experience a real adventure to the White Continent in this 24 day trip where you will also have a lead role and not just an spectator
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February is whale season but it is also when penguin chick start getting out of the nests and wonder around doing some silly penguin stuff.
Trip itinerary:
Ushuaia and the Drake Passage...
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.
Days 2,3,4 – 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 our sailing yacht 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.
Landfall in Antarctica- High jagged peaks, overhanging seracs, huge glaciers dropping newly formed ice bergs into the ocean…… and everywhere life abounds in this icy paradise. Perhaps your first impressions of Antarctica will make you feel that you have entered an alternative reality!
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The Peninsula
Days 6-20 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.
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.
Itinerary in Antarctica is something quite flexible since everything is weather permiting, but some of the places we intend to visit are...
The Argentine Islands home of the ex-british base ‘Faraday’ now Ukrainian “Vernadsky”.
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’s also a favorite spot for family pods of orcas to hunt the crab-eater seals lazing on the floating sea ice.
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.
Port Lockroy to 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.
We head round to Dorian Bay and take a 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 and exploring, we begin to watch for a weather window to sail back across the Drake and make a possible sailor’s ‘Rounding of the Horn’.
Have you ever dreamed going to Antarctica? Does this expedition sound to be the perfect match for you? contact us and find out all details. If this trip does not suite you because of the dates or modality contact us anyway because we may have something for you.
You are just a step away of making you Antarctic dream come true!!
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