We are on our roughest sea day yet. Report from the Bridge is 7-8 meter seas. It is a little strange because the sun is fully out, so it is actually a really nice day. The only reason to put a coat on is to prevent getting soaked by the enormous splashes. Splashes are shooting over the entirety of the ship by the way.

During breakfast half the galley had stuff on the floor, and during lunch I swear I saw fish swimming by the main deck. On bigger swells the horizon disappears for 4 seconds under the boat, reappears for about 1 second, and then disappears above the boat for another 4 seconds. I’d say the average is about 2 seconds of sky, 1 second of horizon, and 2 seconds of sea. Sometimes we get a really monstrous swell that puts people on the floor along with anything else that isn’t firmly tied down.

The lounge and galley have been a bit desolate today. A lot of people are spending their time in bed. I watched one lady put her head into a table and another almost lose her lunch on the grand piano. I have only seen the doctor during those two times; usually, he is in the lounge with us working on his photos.

As for me, I don’t know what happened (there is only one side of the bed I can wake up from) because I am in a fantastic mood today! I have not taken any motion sickness medicine and I rarely need to use the railings to move around. I think I have my sea legs. In fact, I’m loving these rough conditions – it is like a never ending roller coaster with butterflies in the stomach and excitement at every horizon disappearance!

One of the passengers and I made our way to the top deck (above the bridge) to shoot the water coming over the bow. Unfortunately, my camera could only take about two swell sets before I had to retire it to a plastic bag and the dryness of my jacket. I snapped these two shots which show what things look like on an average wave:

Aside from all the sea-hill climbing we’ve been entertained by the naturalists educating us on various things:

• Rikki Swenson gave us some ideas on what to do with our photos
• Flip Nicklin presented a slideshow about how he got into shooting whales for National Geographic and what he’s done since
• Brent Houtson, Captain Oliver Kruss, and the Bowers (passengers) gave their recollections on the original Lindblad Antarctic ship, the MV Explorer. We heard fun tales of expeditions from it and how it sunk last year in Antarctica.
• Kim Heacox gave a fantastic history lesson on the early Antarctic explorers. Kim tells incredible stories and goes into so much detail you feel as if you were there too.
• Melanie Heacox gave us a science lesson on the hole in the ozone layer over the Antarctic area.
• We watched a documentary (selling tactic) on Lindblad/National Geographic tours in Alaska.
• Kevin Schafer finished it all up by showing his photography from around the world – he’s been everywhere and is amazing with a camera!

All in all, there have been some good things to stop us from shooting ourselves to relieve the boredom and the talks have been done in such a way the sick people can listen-in from their cabins.

In between talks, I have been busy sifting through the 12,000+ photos I took so far or throwing together my next blog article in a Word Doc.

….and that is a typical day at sea aboard the National Geographic Endeavour.

Oh yeah…every once in a while you see things like this: