No, Your Other Left (Antarctica - Part 4)

I was hanging out on the bridge, my favorite part of the ship, when we were cruising out of the Lemaire channel to our next landing at Port Charcot.

Enjoying the great day and the views, I start noticing how there’s quite a number of icebergs around us.

I look over at one of the crew, who is actively observing the icebergs through binoculars.

He calls over another guy, who is speaking Dutch.

That guy calls the captain.

I can’t make out any of the words, but I do hear “Titanic”. They chuckle and continue looking out through their binoculars.

Not exactly the vote of confidence you want to hear from the guy whose entire profession revolves around not being the next Titanic.

Sure enough, I walk over to the radar and capture this beauty - all the yellow being icebergs. Doesn’t appear we will be landing at that particular site today.

Don’t be fooled by the sunshine, in this region the weather turns on a dime, and so by now we are used to a change of plans.

Today we’re going to kayak around all the obstacles.

The sun is warm but the breeze and water are cold. I get into my kayaking gear - two sets of thermals, two sets of wool socks, a wetsuit, waterproof jacket, balaclava, hat, two pairs of gloves, and a lifejacket. If you drop anything on the ground you can forget about picking it up until you get back, because you can barely move as is.

It started out innocently enough.

My friend and I get into the kayak. Both of us are a little rusty, haven’t kayaked in a minute, especially tandem. I can't exactly say I'm the most patient partner.

I’m nervous about flipping over into freezing waters. I don’t even like lukewarm showers.

She’s infatuated with her new go-pro and keeps trying to turn around to ask me “Is it on now?”. Every time she turns the kayak wobbles as kayaks do, making me think we are about to flip over. I make some sort of grunting / growling noise in response. Maybe this is how my cats feel when they see running water.

What started out as a breeze has picked up some speed.

In tandem, Thing 1 and Thing 2 keep getting further behind the kayaking group.

Need to paddle faster. In sync.

“Left, right, left, right, left, left, no, left, NO YOUR OTHER LEFT, STOP STOP”

BAM.

If there were 10,000,000 pieces of ice in that bay, that day we hit 9,999,999 of them.

The rest of that fiasco is captured in the audio of that go-pro video. If that video ever sees the light of day my potential political career is over before it ever had a chance.

Later in the safety and warmth of the boat, we ask the instructor if that was hard or if we are just that incompetent.

“Well the guidance states that we do not kayak in more than 15 knots of wind”

“Well how much was that?”

“25”

“Oh”

As always, the artist on board captured the event perfectly -