formidable sea conditions!

The time finally arrived for us to go and we took a taxi to the port where we felt dry land for the last time until Antarctica! We were welcomed aboard Aleksey Maryshev and then took ourselves to our cabin. We were pleasantly surprised by the standard, I’m not quite sure what we were expecting but the cabin whilst being fairly small was very comfortable and we were right opposite the loo in case of any seasick emergencies! Our bags were successfully delivered so that was that, we were all set. The weather had taken a turn for the worse by this point and it was announced over the loud speaker that we should head on deck to wave goodbye to Ushuaia. Unfortunately we were slightly delayed setting sail and it was far to cold to be stood on top deck so we headed down to dock side level, where you could sort of shelter from the wind and stand in front of the warm air vents! It was

here that we first met Phil, a cockney lad from London, we had a brief chat and guessed that we would probably end up spending quite a bit of time with him as he seemed like a really good laugh!

Once we set sail we were given a small briefing by Troels our Danish Expedition leader about what to expect weather wise and it wasn’t looking that good. The area of low pressure which had caused all of the trouble for the past couple of days was still lingering, so we were informed we could and probably would be in for a rough old ride! Due to the weather conditions we had a lifeboat drill pretty soon after we set sail. We had a talk first by the very Russian looking Sergey, the First Mate and were told to expect the alarm any time soon. The alarm sounded and everybody had to go to their cabins and retrieve their life jackets, head to the assembly point and put them on, then not only make our way