Way to Antarctica
A voyage log charting a sea passage from New Zealand to Ushuaia via the Pacific Ocean, followed by travels to the Antarctic Peninsula, Weddell Sea, South Georgia and the Falkland Islands between November & December 2022 and January 2023.
Day 0
Journeys. Some begin with a plan, some with a portal.
Exactly what we’ll be doing between New Zealand and Ushuaia is unclear.
I’d like to know the plan: what will we be doing, how much of it, and for how many hours per day?
What, in other words, is the job?
But no one seems to know.
What I understand is that the ship is going to be full of boxes, hundreds of them, and we’re going to unpack, unwrap, inventory and tidy them, preparing the ship for its maiden voyage.
Exactly how that’s going to look . . . we’ll find out when we get there.
It’s been three years since I last worked in Antarctica. And it’s been . . . complex. I loved building up garden beds and growing my first radish from seed, riding my first single-track, buying my first adult couch.
But somewhere around the two to three year mark my interest in radishes waned. The couch lost its shine. I bought a new bed and, for a while, I stayed there. It wasn’t a conscious decision, it just seemed to make sense. I had a new job writing online, plus the bed was very comfortable. And if I worked from bed, maybe I could claim the depreciation of the bed on my taxes.
Living alone, it was easy to get away with this kind of thing. And after three years of cloistered living, I was a convert. I didn’t really want to leave the house at all anymore. I was well-suited to this passive life, I thought. I was like zooplankton, drifting amidst the swaying seaweed of my mind.
I was always planning to work in Antarctica in December, but in October someone from the company emailed asking if I’d like to sail across the Pacific instead of flying as we usually do. They were looking for people to help out during the ‘transit’, preparing the brand new ship for its maiden voyage. This would mean being away for two or three weeks in addition to my six-week contract in Antarctica.
I thought about my house plants.
Then I thought about my bank account.
I heard echoes from the past: Polynesian seafarer Ui te Rangiora sailing his waka (open boat) southward along New Zealand’s east coast towards Te tai-uka-a-pia, the white-flecked seas of the Southern Ocean.
James Cook and his team sailing the Resolution from New Zealand in search of Terra Australis Incognita (unknown southern land) the 1700s.
I thought of me following in their footsteps, approaching Antarctica by sea like the explorers of old - sure I’d be in a brand new cruise ship with a Swedish cedar sauna and two spas on the top deck, but still.
I said yes.
I spent the next few weeks feeling ambivalent. The getting-out-of-bed-every-day part was just one of many concerns I harboured about life on board.
I was also concerned about living with other people for the first time in several years.
Working every day, and managing an unspecified workload consisting of I wasn’t exactly sure what, that was a bit of a worry too. Because all that bed-lying and home-sitting hadn't done much for my fitness.
Seasickness.
Not to mention the uncertainty around what they’d serve us crew members during the voyage (I still shudder when I remember the offal stews and bitter cucumber salads I was served on one ship I worked on a few years ago).
As the departure date neared I could feel myself wavering. But it was too late to back out.
When people asked how I was I told them I wasn’t feeling resilient. It was the only way I knew to capture the sense of friability rippling through me.
I was tired. I felt vague. I didn't want to go. Packing took years.
Still, some latent part of me understood that I used to like this. Maybe I still would. So I went down to Sydney and boarded the flight to Auckland.
Some journeys begin with a plan, some with a portal.
And some begin with a port.
And a porthole.
This is that kind of journey.
© Nina Gallo 2023
