21ST JANUARY

Again we were awoken by the cheerful boom of Troels coming through our cabin speaker and his usual greeting of ‘Good Morning everyone, Good Morning’! Troels was ecstatic about the weather so we were up like a shot and were told that we had arrived in the sheltered waters of Erebus and Terror Gulf and were slowly making our way to Paulet Island. Paulet Island was one of three overwintering camps of a Swedish Antarctic Expedition of 1901 - 1904. Everyone was very excited about the prospect of a super sensational (a favourite expression of our good leader Troels!) landing at Paulet Island, home to over 400,000 Adelie Penguins!

After breakfast we donned our many layers and made our way down to the front of the ship. The Russian Crew were masters in the art of getting the zodiacs into the water with lightening speed and the zodiacs were always in the water and ready for us

to climb aboard. To board a zodiac you had to walk down a ladder attached to the side of the ship and then step onto the zodiac and immediately sit and slide down to where there is space. Obviously the first in have to go to the back near the driver and the others sat accordingly. Simply enough you would have thought, but there were many tiresome people who refused to do this and ended up trying to walk and inevitably wobbled their way down to where they wanted to sit. I’m sure this makes it incredibly difficult for the zodiac drivers. When getting on the zodiac you use the sailors method of holding onto each other, basically grabbing the zodiac drivers wrist instead of just holding his hand. This is a far more stable way of holding someone especially as the zodiac is bobbing around in the water, and there is another crew member at the bottom of the ladder helping as well. There were a few passengers who always made it their business to be on the first zodiac regardless of who they had to push around