In Which Our Hero Gets Shamed for Telling "A Dad Joke."

After visiting Port Lockroy and the Gentoo penguin rookery across the bay on Saturday, we headed back to cross through the Lemaire Channel again – this time during daylight hours (which last a long time during austral summer).

It was other worldly (I know I’ve used that word before, but it fits again!).  A 40 foot sailboat was transiting at the same time.  We couldn’t believe that a boat that size would cross the Drake Passage, and then have to worry about dodging all the icebergs, bergy bits, and ice floes.  The hull of the sailboat is made of steel, but I can’t imagine how stressful the crossing and subsequent ice must be.

The Lemaire Channel is a very narrow body of water that leads (when going southbound) to the Penola Straits.  Mountains that do double duty as islands rise up on either side, and glaciers abound.  Of course, the sun wasn’t out so the pictures are, like many on this trip, a bit on the dark and grey side.  Trust me, whatever pictures I post won’t do it justice.

We came out the other side in the Penola Straits, and the Captain ran the ship into an iceberg to park it.  Our fearless leaders decided there was too much snow to land on Pleneau Island, so instead we hopped in the zodiac and cruised around the islands and many large icebergs (not tabular size, but these are still big enough to cause Leonardo DiCaprio to wake up in a cold sweat).

On one ice flow, there were a bunch of seals scattered about, sleeping as is their wont to do.  Two of them – a Weddell and a Crabeater, were lying down next to each other.  Alyssa, our driver, answered questions about it – saying they don’t mate, and they don’t fight, they are just hanging out together.

So I quipped, “I guess they are just going with the floe.”  While the other nine passengers laughed, Alyssa said, “You must be a dad, that’s a dad joke.  My dad would use that joke.”  If you listened closely, you could hear my daughters cheering her on all the way from the Northern Hemisphere.  (Sorry, daughters, that comeback can only be used once, and Alyssa already did, so don’t think you can zing me with it.)

We covered a lot of ground in the Penola Strait, including stopping by the hotel zodiac for whiskey tasting (I passed – I stick to my beer and wine).  The amazing part was that there were times we couldn’t see the ship – it was hidden amongst too many icebergs.