“Give me this glorious ocean life, this salt-sea life, this briny, foamy life, when the sea neighs and snorts, and you breathe the very breath that the great whales respire! Let me roll around the globe, let me rock upon the sea; let me race and pant out my life with an eternal breeze astern, and an endless sea before.” ~ Herman Melville

Woke up and immediately started coughing up a lung… stepped out of the bathroom and said in my best ‘phone sex operator’ husky voice: “Well, I feel better, how about you?”  It is so annoying that myself and Trish have both picked up some bug that someone has brought on the ship with them – there has been a steady increase in people with an alarming sounding rattling cough, and unsurprisingly in such close quarters, here we are both down with it.

I really don’t want to fly home with this and hope I am better by then… long-haul flights when you’re crook are absolutely shite.  But in the meantime, we have two more days of excursions still to go and another planned in Portal Point this morning which is on the continent proper, so we are both determined to ignore the lurgy and get the most out of these few days in Antarctica.

Okay – scratch that.  We had *hoped* to land at Portal Point this morning but the weather had other plans. It was a balmy 3C but we had winds of 35 knots, which is not suitable for zodiac cruising at all. Portal Point lies at the entrance to Charlotte Bay on the Reclus Peninsula, on the west coast of Graham Land. The British named it after they built a refuge hut at this site in 1956, enabling them to use a nearby snow slope as a gateway up onto the Peninsula plateau. The hut was only occupied from 1956 to 1958, and research conducted from this field hut focused on surveying the region and studying the local geology. The building was dismantled in 1997 and taken to the Falkland Islands apparently. Portal Point is also quite scenic due to the surrounding mountains, lots of crevassed glaciers and glacial tongues that extend down to sea level so it was quite pretty to sail through it, but looking at the chop and watching the snow coming in sideways made us glad we weren’t planning on going out in it. Can you tell I’m inside today updating this as we go?

So we have made it into Graham Passage which separates Murray Island from the west coast of Graham Land. It was named by a Captain Skidsmo after his whale catcher ship, ‘Graham’ which was the first to pass through it, on March 20, 1922. The passage is lined with enormous ice cliffs, which makes for really spectacular scenery as well as great opportunities for viewing marine mammals or at least it might if I was willing to go out on decks and watch as we sailed past.

I am currently in my centrally heated cabin, in bed, rugged up under a doona and a blanket wearing pyjamas and a thick polar fleece jumper and leaning against an electric heat pack propped up on some pillows. I am coughing up lots of crap (which is hurting my back) and my breathing is somewhat laboured, and I’m contemplating getting dressed to go out into the ‘feels like -5C and the snow is coming in sideways, Outside™’, to go for a zodiac cruise. I’ve never really been accused of being stupid before… but I think after this it is probably a fairly fitting descriptor.

This may not be my finest moment of self-care…

So… about half an hour after I wrote the above, I went outside to take some photos of the glaciers and ice in Graham Passage (well, look at it – you can’t just look at this amazing landscape through a salt-splattered cabin window!) and the cold air brought on such a huge coughing fit that I have decided to be sensible and *not* go out for a zodiac excursion in Graham Passage. 🙁 It’s still snowing – sideways – and our Expedition Leader, Woody, has just come over the PA suggesting everyone ‘rug up a bit, it’s a bit chilly’… which is rugged and tough Antarctic Expedition Leader for: ‘It’s fucking cold people, don’t make me pull out the emergency blankets because you don’t have enough layers on’.

Instead, Trish and I have spent the morning enjoying the views from the ship and watching some movies on the in-room movie channel in between coughing fits. I’ve rung to see the ship’s doctor primarily just to double check which anti-biotic I should be self-medicating on, and I hope I’m much better tomorrow to get in some more zodiac cruising at Deception Island.

Those of our group who did go out this morning said the bay was very beautiful and there was sea ice forming – it needs to get stupid cold for sea ice to be forming on the surface – but that the whales were not very active, they were just logging this morning so it was a very cold and rather quiet excursion. I’m glad I didn’t miss more leopard seals feeding or a pod or killer whales or something, but not so great every one went out in these conditions and didn’t get to see much.

This afternoon we are heading to Cierve Bay to hopefully try and find a calmer spot to go zodiac cruising. At this stage, I’m unlikely to go – I’m still waiting to see Shannon, the ship’s doctor.

Thankfully just after lunch, Shannon, the ship’s doctor came to see us. She had a listen to my chest and I was so relieved to hear that it was just a virus going around the ship and not the start of some hideous bronchitis thing. She has seen nearly half of the people on the ship with similar symptoms since we all got on board, and most of those that had it at the beginning of the trip are well and truly over it now.   She also said that the cold air and being outside wasn’t going to make us any worse so if we go out, so just rest up and have a few early nights.

Woo-hoo! I felt rather relieved. After having bloody bronchial pneumonia knock me on my arse for about 8 weeks in 2015, I am really wary of chesty illnesses. The result of this fortuitous conversation was that I felt better about getting rugged up and going out with the afternoon’s planned zodiac cruising around Cierve Bay.

A sneaky leopard seal checking out the propellor on our zodiac (damn, where’s my polariser now?!) Traversing the brash ice to get into the harbour – I love the sound that it makes as you cut through it in the zodiacs.

I am so glad I rugged up and went out… With no real notice the weather had lifted and cleared up completely and we spent a couple of hours riding around in the zodiacs in beautiful blue skies and bright sunshine this afternoon.   It was so warm I was unzipping my parka and taking my gloves off to try and cool down. We have really been enjoying the moody and atmospheric conditions that we have had over the last few days of excursions, but now Antarctica showed us a whole different palette of colours.

About four gorgeous whales in front of a tidewater glacier. Not a single one of these photos has been adjusted for brightness, contrast, colour balance or anything.  They are straight from the camera and unfiltered and unenhanced.  A couple might have had yellow jacket bits cropped out of them – but they are compltely unmanipulated.
While earlier we had been lamenting the lack of blue skies somewhat, now that we had some, I was glad for the overcast days leading up to this – everything is so blindingly white and the glare hits you from every direction.  The worst of it is you can’t see anything on your camera’s LCD screen – even turned right up, it’s not bright enough to overcome this much ambient light.  So every shot you take is pretty much composed blind (so many crooked horizons!). Behind us when we turned into the sun:Getting in amongst the ice.Some Chinstrap penguins blending in with the Gentoo.

Crystal clear water, gorgeous blue icebergs and bright snow and clear skies. It was just amazing out there this afternoon. We saw more leopard seals feeding, at one point were surrounded by about a dozen humpback whales, more crab-eater seals and quite a few chinstrap penguins. The guides here are incredible and you would think they would be used to this place, but every day we have gone out with them they have seemed as full of amazement as we are. This afternoon our guide, Naomi, was so overcome she literally had tears in her eyes when a humpback whale emerged from the dark water right beside our zodiac.   He was so huge and so calm and majestic, and so close I swear you could have reached out to touch him. We have seen so many whales this trip, and the guides have been telling us that on many trips, people are lucky to see one whale, and there we were this afternoon surrounded by about fifteen whales and not knowing which way to look, in the hope of seeing their elegant tails as they dived down to feed.

Chinstrap photo by Arthur:  Photo by Linda:Linda again:Couple of pics from Arthur: Poor little penguin! Nasty ol’ leopard seal.Gulp feeding.  Photo by Jandoc:Photo by Leonardo (Lyn, Mum, Trish and I are in the zodiac pictured!):

We saw some rather rare phenomena today – a large truck sized iceberg rolled right in front of us.  The sun comes out for even just a short time and it will accelerate the melting of an iceberg and with that melting comes a destabilizing effect that causes the iceberg to roll to regain ‘balance’ on the water.  We saw a chunk fall off an iceberg and then saw as it rolled and rolled until it seemingly lumbered its way to a new resting position.

I am so glad I went out this afternoon.

“A journey is a person in itself, no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, polices and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.”

~ John Steinbeck

I’ve celebrated many things on ships… birthdays, several Christmases, New Year’s Eve, Australia Day, 4^th July on a US ship, St Patricks Day, Halloween, ANZAC Day and even Easter. I have also celebrated Crossing the Equator, Crossing the International Dateline, Transiting the Panama Canal, and until now, my favourite, Crossing the Arctic Circle at 66° 33′ North just off the north coast of Iceland.

Tonight, we got a 20-minute call over the public address system at 0140 that we would be Crossing the Antarctic Circle 66° 33’ South just after 0200 and anyone who wanted to be on the outer decks of Deck 6 should rug up and come out for a glass of champagne.

So we quickly jumped out of bed and expected there to be a handful of crazy people willing to forgo sleep and warmth to toast this momentous occasion. Our cabin on the ship is 623 so we are already on the right deck and walked about 10m down the corridor into a mass of yellow Quark jackets!

The crew had been up and ready before us with trays of champagne, and so many people had gotten up to toast the Crossing of the Antarctic Circle. All the expedition staff were here, many in penguin and dragon onesies, and I would estimate that 90% of the passengers were here too.

The excitement and buzz around the group as we floated in the deep southern ocean waiting for Woody our Expedition Leader to say tell us exactly when we were crossing the invisible line was infectious. Everyone was all smiles and excited for the expeditions to come.

Word came from the bridge and a countdown was started – it felt very much like a New Years toast only people were talking about having goosebumps and how much they had been looking forward to this for decades. We milled around and were eventually herded together for a group photo by the ship’s photographer, Acacia. We were then taking turns being photographed beside a handmade sign to mark the occasion.

I, for one, can’t hardly believe I am actually here. Antarctica is a place I have always thought I would want to come, but never in my life did I think I would actually get here.

After all the buzz of excitement and champagne we eventually all head back inside to try and get back to sleep. It took me ages to wind down and get back to sleep.

 

“I now belong to a higher cult of mortals for I have seen the albatross”
~ Robert Cushman Murphy

Managed to sleep in again this morning which was fantastic and opted to skip breakfast in favour of sitting on a heat-pack and catching up on some writing… that and we can’t keep eating like this!

The schedule for this morning was pretty light – we had a photography lecture, “Capturing the Experience; Photography Basics” at 0930 which I thought I would go along to for shits and giggles. Many people in the room were there with their big DSLR camera equipment and many were there with little point and shoot cameras, and there is an equal portion of people using just their smartphones… and why not?  The image quality from many modern smartphones is excellent these days and they are so easy and convenient to use – great for landscapes and portraits, but of course, there are limitations in using a smartphone for wildlife or anything that requires zoom. It’s my opinion that the one truly spectacular image that you capture from your trip is far more likely to come from fortuitous timing than having the biggest and most expensive camera equipment, so it was great to hear Acacia, our photography guide open her talk by saying that, ‘the best camera, is the one you have’. She did a great job of explaining photography basics in 45 minutes and covered technical camera operations in laymen’s terms as well as the importance of composition and lighting.

Didn’t really learn anything new, except perhaps that I have not experimented enough with the various ‘scene’ settings on the point and shoot camera I chose to bring with me in favour of lugging my DLSR and lenses around every day.  Yes, I came to a photography mecca and one that is particularly known for its rugged landscapes and unique wildlife photography opportunities and I chose NOT to bring my DSLR and hefty professional lenses… why?  Well, because I wanted to immerse myself in the experience of being here, and allow my photography to capture my experiences rather than to have the photography take over the entire trip.  These days I am carrying a small Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX90V point and shoot digital camera with its pretty damn fancy 700mm equivalent, 30x zoom.  It was fantastic on my last Baltic trip with all the low light conditions in the museums and palaces, and I was equally impressed with how it functioned in freezing cold conditions at Whistler over the Christmas break.  So I’m pretty sure it will be up to the task here too.

After the lecture, I thought I’d avail myself of the invitation to go visit the bridge – have a look at the Drake Passage and see where we are going on the electronic charts that have been made available for us to view there.

The Bridge has many pairs of binoculars so guests can bird watch, or look for wildlife or even ice bergs.  There are also books in here for bird identification and maps of the Antarctic Peninsula.

The arrow marked our current position while I was on the Bridge, and the other dropped pin marks the Antarctic Circle, which we hope to cross at some point during the night.

Mid-morning we had another lecture, this time with Annie, one of the onboard marine biologists, on: “Pinnipeds of the Antarctic”. Which had most of us walking around the ship asking… ‘What on earth is a pinniped?’

It turns out for those marine biology challenged amongst us that a pinniped is a seal – or a finned, feather-footed marine mammal. Marine mammals are those that derive most of their nutrition from marine environments. For the sake of simplicity, they are effectively the eared and earless seals or Phocidae and Otariidae.

If you’re not interested in learning the ins and outs of a fat seal’s arse skip down to “HERE”!

Continue reading →

 

It seems we are going to get philosophical travel quotes with our daily program.  Nice!

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing .”

     ~ Helen Keller

Being extraordinarily overtired and having been rocked to sleep by the ship, I slept in uncustomarily late – an impressive 0730. We woke up to some very beautiful and moody foggy conditions over lovely calm sea.  The ‘fog bow’ picture below was taken by a fellow passenger, Shona.  It was not long afterwards that breakfast was announced over the ship’s public address system and we all dressed and filed downstairs for a fabulous buffet breakfast.

After breakfast, we had another briefing, this time about the delicate Antarctic environment and the IAATO (International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators) conventions – that would govern our visit to the Antarctic region, followed by a zodiac watercraft safety briefing.  We discussed the challenges we would find with our itinerary seeing we were going so far south.  Our itinerary was one of the few that Quark offers that actually goes south far enough to cross the Antarctic Circle… this is the last trip the Ocean Diamond will do this year, and this is only the second time our Expedition Team were going to cross the Circle this season.  Most people who journey to the Antarctic (tourists like us, I should say, not researchers and scientists) will take a trip that takes in the Falklands, the South Shetland Islands and/or the South Georgia Islands and then hit the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula before heading back across the Drake… our itinerary was basically to hightail it as far south as possible to come around Adelaide Island and into Marguerite Bay (at around 68° south) before slowly winding our way back up the Antarctic Peninsula, stopping where conditions permitted.

I chose this itinerary because it was the trip that offered the most time actually *in Antarctica* compared to other trips which spent more time at sea going to the Falklands (where we had already visited last year) and the South Georgia Islands which are sub-Antarctic environments (ie: more greenery, more rock, less dramatic glaciers, icebergs and snow).  So this trip was going to be all Antarctica, all the way – and even the Expedition Staff seemed excited about going this far south of the Circle this late in the season.

As it happens, Quark is one of the founding members of the IAATO organization whose goal is to have eco-responsible tourism occurring in the Antarctic and Arctic regions. They have a mission to leave the Antarctic pristine, ensuring visitors leave no rubbish, disturb no wildlife and take no plant or rock souvenirs home. There are strict guidelines and procedures in place for how tours can be conducted in Antarctica which includes stringent biosecurity measures – they do not want tourists unwittingly introducing exotic plant, animal or bacterial material to any of the delicate Antarctic ecosystems.

One of these measures involves getting passengers to have any garments or backpacks or walking poles that will be used on the Peninsula checked by the Expedition Team for seeds, soil or plant matter. Basically, anything that was not purchased brand new for this trip that we were planning on taking with us when we left the ship on excursions (particularly outer layer garments), had to be checked by staff. The staff had set up vacuuming stations on each level of the ship and passengers were called through to have their backpacks and garments inspected and vacuumed for minute particles. Additionally, a washing station was set up on the lower decks to have walking poles, tripods and monopods scrubbed in disinfectant. The Expedition Team impressed upon us how seriously they take this responsibility, and the biosecurity checking took a number of hours as they called passengers from each deck to vacuum and check our things.

We were also informed of procedures that would occur after zodiac landing expeditions where we would have our boots hosed down and then we would be required to step through trays of disinfectant upon arrival back at the ship to stop any cross-pollination of bacteria, pollens, seeds or plant matter from site to site as we travel along the Peninsula… If it all sounds a bit full on or over the top – just do a Google image search for ‘Mt Everest rubbish dump’… climbers have been abandoning rubbish, excess food, spent oxygen cylinders and extraneous camping equipment at Mt Everest base came for about 80 years, and there is now literally tonnes of rubbish scattered about in one of the most remote environments on earth that environmentalists are working hard to bring back down for suitable disposal. I certainly appreciate the efforts being made to keep Antarctica a pristine environment, and for a change, not a single tourist here appeared to be complaining about these regulations being an inconvenience. I guess the type of person who is attracted to an Antarctic voyage with a company like Quark, already has a keen appreciation for the delicate nature of the remote environments we will be entering into and likewise, wants to see them preserved and protected.

The biosecurity measures took quite some time and while it was going on we were being called deck by deck to collect a pair of Muck boots. In another effort to ensure the safety and comfort of passengers, Quark lends their pax a pair of high quality insulated rubber boots for use during the expedition. These boots are designed to keep your feet warm and dry during zodiac excursions and it meant none of us had to go to the expense of buying expensive single-use footwear for the trip. The boots themselves are very heavy duty and finding the right size turned out to be kinda difficult – I have tiny feet and these are men’s boots; in men’s boots I would ordinarily be wearing a size 4, but there was no way I was going to fit my calf into boots that are designed for a ten-year-old boy.  So with some really thick socks, I opted for the size 5, but like many short chicks who aren’t the skinniest of minnies, they were still stupidly restrictive around the calf – like seriously, cutting off my circulation, restrictive. So I tried on a 6 but then my foot was slipping around inside the boot too much.  :/

Oh well, I was just going to have to take the size 5s, fold the boots over and hope we didn’t get into any water deeper than a few inches… I wasn’t alone on this one, plenty of women found the boots too tight around their calves tiny feet or not.  It will likely be doubly so once we put on our layers of warmth under our waterproof outer-pants. And if we thought trying them on was hard, taking them off was doubly difficult! Once your foot was securely into the boots, trying to lever them off was really hard. The easiest way to accomplish this unexpectedly difficult task is to have your roommate pull them off for you and then you can pull theirs off for them!  🙂

All of this preparation for our excursions took several hours and before we know it, it was suddenly lunchtime. Lunch was again served in the Dining Room and was quite an impressive buffet of salads and warm dishes, soups and stirfry, sandwiches and hamburgers were also on offer – they were obviously planning on totally over feeding us this trip. The sea had been getting rougher as the day wore on and there were noticeably fewer people attending lunch today than dinner last night.  Mind you – it didn’t look rough outside, just long rolling swells that didn’t seem all that agreeable to some people.

Our fearless Expedition Leader, David Wood (‘Woody’, yes of course he’s Australian) would come to call this sort of weather, ‘romantic’ or ‘dramatic’… with him there was no such things as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ weather.

After lunch, we had two lectures, the first on ‘Birds of the Southern Ocean’s with the onboard ornithologist Liliana. Did I mention how incredibly qualified and overachieving the entire Expedition Team are?  There are more PhDs and professional qualifications among this lot than you see at your average academic conference – I certainly wasn’t expecting that.

It was very interesting, I learned that seabirds or sentinels are designated such due to spending most of their lives at sea and only returning to land to breed. Unfortunately populations of various seabirds have decreased by approximately 50% over the last 70 years, largely due to pollution and habitat and food source depletion. Seabirds generally have quite a long lifespan and can live up to 70 years – there is one Lazen Albatross, named Wisdom who was tagged as a chick and who has her own Facebook page so she is known to be 67 years old, and is apparently breeding again.  Incredible.

I also learned that most seabirds are ‘philopatric’ – which means they are attached to their place of origin to breed, whether it is to a certain colony or a certain island, or even as specific as a certain slope on a certain island within a certain colony. The come back to the exact same spot when they are mature enough to breed themselves. Philopatric animals are very sensitive to changes in their environments – for example, there is a colony of Atlantic Puffins that is suffering considerably from fishing depletion in their attachment area and they are unable to find fish small enough to be ingested by their chicks. The adult birds are currently okay, they can consume the larger fish, but they continue to breed in the same place and they repeatedly feed their chicks with fish that are too large for the chicks to eat.  As a result, the chicks are starving. The adult birds however, continue to return to the same rookery each year and try again to breed a chick. It’s really very sad.

Recently, as in the last week or so, an entirely new colony of Adelie penguins has been found on remote southern side of the Antarctic Peninsular where drone explorations found 1.5 million nesting pairs that were not known to inhabit the area. That is 3 million Adelie penguins and as many as 1.5million chicks that were previously unknown to researchers, and Liliana as an Antarctic ornithologist was very excited about this find because Adelies have a small clutch size and very slow chick growth rate, so it is very promising for the Adelies.  Most seabirds tend to breed in large colonies like this, as this gives the large group a better chance to survive predators, and it is easier for them to show each other where sources of food have been found.  The downside is that disease can spread through a colony very rapidly due to the close proximity.

It was at this lecture that I learned all about the Antarctic Convergence or the Polar Front, which basically affects all life in the Antarctic.  The Antarctic Convergence is where water masses up to 1000-2000m deep that circulate in the Southern Oceans meet warmer waters from ocean currents in the north and are lifted towards the surface as they approach Antarctica, bringing water to the surface that is rich in nutrients and krill. The Antarctic Convergence encircles the Antarctic continent and moves in latitude each year depending on currents and variations in water temperatures etc. However, between South America and Antarctica, there is not much room for the Front to move so it remains fairly consistent and predictable, so it makes for a good place to look for seabirds, whales and other sea mammals that survive on phytoplankton, zooplankton and krill etc.  I knew nothing about this phenomena – I feel like I’ve been living in ignorance.

There are many seabirds prevalent in these convergence regions from Great Albatross, Grey Albatross, Great Southern Royal Albatross (enormous birds with a wingspan of 3m) down to smaller petrels, cormorants and terns. Too many to list here. The most interesting thing I learned about any of these seabirds during this lecture is they tend to spend most of their life in flight – and that they actually expend more energy when being on the surface of the water than when gliding in the air over the water’s surface. It turns out that these birds (and some seals too) are capable of unihemispheric single wave sleep while sleeping – that is, they can shut down half their brain and let it go to sleep while the other half of their brain keeps the body functioning and in this case, flying, allowing them to remain flying for many more hours of the day.

Sorry if this is boring but I thought it was fascinating stuff… they were preparing us to better understand what we would likely be seeing over the coming weeks, but after this lecture, I was mostly just wishing humans were capable of unihemispheric sleep!  😀

After our bird lecture, there was an “Antarctica In the Imagination: Pre-History” with Justine our onboard historian, which I am told was very interesting, but unfortunately, I missed it and hope to catch up on this one later.

At 1800 we had our Daily Recap and Briefing in the Main Lounge which apparently will happen every day to go over the things we saw each day and to give a brief overview of what to expect the next day.

Then it was 1900 and a Welcome Cocktail party to meet Captain Oleg Klaptenko from Russia, and his staff – free champagne and canapés.  The Captain (yet another one who says his public speaking is terrible) issued an open invitation for passengers to visit the bridge whenever we wanted to.  We were then treated to a wonderful Welcome Dinner in the main Dining Room.

We had another delicious meal – this time of mushroom soup, beautifully cooked Argentinian tenderloin beef and vegetables, followed by cheese and crackers (obviously there were other choices, but this is what I chose for dinner), and of course, more complimentary wine with dinner.  I don’t know why, but I was expecting more rudimentary meals than we were used to on cruise ships, this being an expedition type voyage – but we were on a fabulous floating restaurant, with an Austrian chef named Gunter who had a wonderful habit (that I heartily endorse) of supplying an enormous wheel of blue cheese at every meal!

I did eventually remember to take some photos in the dining room… 

 

 

After dinner many of us met in The Club bar to have a casual talk with Woody on ‘Maritime Superstitions’.

Woody started off his informal chat about superstitions by explaining that superstitions are about belief – so if you believe it, it will be true (for you at least) and people will continually frame a narrative that reinforces their belief system. If this sounds like religion to you – well, yes.  It may as well be.

Anyway, he had a list as long as your arm of ‘Bad Luck’ superstitions:

• No whistling on ships – Captains on many ships will insist on no whistling on their ships and have been known to put people ashore for continuing to whistle, it apparently brings bad weather and the association is likely with the whistling noise high winds make in the sails.
• Woody asked us how many of us looked back to Ushuaia as we left port, to which about 80% of the room put up their hands, whereupon he informed us it was bad luck to be looking back – you must always be looking forward on a ship. It is extremely bad luck to be looking behind you from the bridge for very obvious reasons… on the bridge you need to be alert to hazards in front of you!
• Black travel bags and luggage are also assocated with bad luck, merely because of black being the colour of death and darkness.
• Another more modern ‘bad luck’ superstition is to never say the ‘T” word on a ship – and if you don’t know what I mean by the “T” word, it was the name of a movie made in 1997 staring Kate Winslet and Leonardo di Caprio staring an enormous wrecked ship.
• More unlucky words “Rabbit” and “Rat” – instead you can say “Bunny” or “Rodent with the Long Tail”. Woody had no concrete ideas on where this one is coming from but apparently, French sailors in particular, are very superstitious about rabbits and rats?!
• Killing am albatross is bad luck – though many expeditions into the Southern Oceans found albatross a godsend when they had run out of supplies.
• When drinking, you do not chink glasses as the ringing sound made from the glasses colliding means a sailor loses his soul. Instead sailors will salute one another by putting glasses together but ensuring that hands connect with hands instead of allowing glass to connect with glass. If glass accidentally connects with glass, sailors will often cover the glass to smother the ringing sound as soon as possible.
• When cooking whole fish on a ship and the meat has been removed from the topside of the fish, the fish should not be turned over to gain access to the meat on the bottom of the fish. This action is believed to cause ships to capsize. Instead the meat on top should be eaten, the bones removed and the bottom meat then accessed.
• It is apparently very bad luck to rename a ship. Shackleton bought a ship called ‘The Polaris’ and promptly renamed it ‘The Endurance’ which then turned around and sank (in sailing lore, this of course had nothing to do with the ice, but rather because the ship was renamed!). Another example of bad luck following a ship with a name change with the USS Phoenix which survived the bombing of Pearl Harbour only to later be sold to the Argentinian Navy where it was renamed. It promptly sank in 1982 (again, nothing to do with the Falklands War according to sailors, it was due to the name change!).
• Oddly, the only good way to rename a ship was to do so on the day of a full moon…?  Apparently, the Ocean Diamond that we were currently in the middle of the Drake Passage on, has been renamed, but Woody promised us it was done correctly on a full moon… wtf?!
• Priests on board are bad luck – they are dressed in black all the time, and of course priests are heavily associated with death and more darkness and whatnot.
• Bananas! Who would have thought bananas onboard would be bad luck. But apparently Bananas are bad luck as they stop you catching fish. Cargoes of bananas were always run fast to get their produce to market before they went off, so Captains were often pressured by owners to sail faster and take dangerous shortcuts. In addition to that the bananas could quickly ripen and start fermenting in the hold making other stock (like slaves) sick, and they were also prone to carrying insects which then bit the crew. So that one at least kinda makes sense.

‘Good Luck’ superstitions seem somewhat thin on the ground in comparison:

• Albatross and seabirds are considered good luck, as this meant land was hopefully nearby.
• Dolphins were considered good luck, though why, Woody didn’t say
• And THAT’S IT for good luck at sea.

On the balance of things… it seems going to sea is all bad and should be avoided at all costs!