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Program of the Day (11 December 2003 17:30-20:00)

On the door of every cabin there was for very passenger a schedule of the day and the program for the rest of today was as follows:

17:30 You are invited to a Welcome Cocktail in the Observation Lounge (Deck 5 aft) 18:00 Intro to the Ship by Hotel Manager Chris Ralph followed by staff introductions 19:00 Dinner is served in the dining room (deck 3, close to reception) 20:00 Introduction of Captain and Abandon Ship Drill (mandatory) The champagne cocktail was nicely served with a cheese platter, diverse fruits and salmon with toast as a buffet and tasted excellent. In the Observation Lounge there is a permanent corner with free water, apple juice, orange juice, instant soups, crackers, tea and coffee. In this room the daily lectures take place too, so part of it is set up with comfortable lounge chairs and part of it is set up with rows of comfortable chairs.

The introduction of the staff was amusing, especially the introduction of the lecturers who are typical characters from diverse parts of the world. I nick-named them the Nature Nerds which covered it quite well. Dennis Mense, the expedition leader is Canadian and so is his wife Sabine Leader Mense, a marine biologist. Jorn Hendrikson is a Norwegian assistant expedition leader and Hannah Lawson from Great Britain is a naturalist. The married couple Melanie and Kim Heacox are naturalist and historian respectively. Furthermore there is a doctor on board, Judy Forbes from the great country of New Zealand and one more lecturer, American Gary Kochert is going to lecture us on Botany on the Antarctic Peninsula and Geology and Glaciology as well.

At 19:00 we had an excellent dinner in the dining room. First on the menu there was a Cauliflower & Almond Soup, followed by a buffet of salads combined with a choice of Poached Filled of Chilean Salmon with a fresh Dill Hollandaise or Vegetable fritters with a fresh Herb Sour Cream. For desert there was the excellent Raspberry-Lemon Cheesecake. As you can see, traveling is a hard life ... During dinner the doctor visited all of us and asked whether we needed any seasickness medicine. From passengers who had returned the previous day I heard that over half had become sick in very rough waters. Seasickness pills only work if you take them before you get sick, it is a preventive pill against getting sick so I decided to take them. They were for free and I am still Dutch after all.

The mandatory Abandon Ship Drill took place at 20:15 because some of us were still eating. It was useful to test escape routes as this ship is not that easy to navigate through. The problem with an ice breaker is that all engine parts and mechanic stuff are in the middle, so you have to go up or down a few decks before you can get from one side of the ship to the other. We had to put on our life jackets and muster at the muster station near the lifeboats. A funny test and hopefully we won't have to use the life jackets during the trip.

Because of the fact that new crew was not able to fly into Ushuaia until late and that there appeared to be some passport problems with some people the boat could not leave until 21:45, eating almost 4 hours of the total length of the trip. We left a cloudy but dry Ushuaia, set sail through the Beagle Channel and waived the lights of the most southern city in the world goodbye. The trip had begun.