All aboard the Ioffe (Antarctica Marathon Part IV)

The bedrooms on the ship remind me of college dormitories. The spaces are 6 x 8 feet, and we use the doors for beer pong tables; the glass cups are taken for beer pong, and all of us fought over top and bottom bunks.

Only the last is true.

The rooms are small, but roughly 6 x 20 feet.

We have a happy hour daily and drink wine during dinner, but we’re marathoners trying to stay hydrated.

We did fight over the top and bottom bunk though. I was afraid of toppling over the one inch blip. However I was convinced to stick with the top after learning I’d sway with the boat head to toe, not side by side — making it much harder to find yourself on the ground in the middle of the night.

When we first came aboard the ship, we received our room number and found our baggage had already arrived. A welcoming sight. (And yes, I overpacked. I found you wear the same layers again and again while at sea.)

We quickly unpacked and went up to the dock to watch the ship pull away from shore. We were all giddy. Buenos Aires and Ushuaia were adventures, but the real adventure was Antarctica.

We stayed on the dock until mid-picture the horns alerted us to a drill — seven short blasts and one long blast. Tricky to call a drill while we were distracted on the dock. In non-emergency fashion, we all calmly climbed down the steps to grab layers and the life jackets in our room. We then calmly climbed back up the steps to the lifeboats.

Comfortably these lifeboats could hold five people. They are made to support 60 passengers for days at sea however. (It’s even equipped with a bucket.) We were given the chance to climb into the boat, and I found them to be claustrophobic.

Over dinner, the waves started to pick up, and we learned a storm would keep us stationary for six hours in the middle of the night. We were also shocked to learn that we hadn’t even entered the Drake Passage and the worst was yet to come. Everyone went back to their rooms to take their (drugs) and secure their patches in the hopes of preventing sea sickness.

We fell asleep swaying back and forth.

Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII