People travel for very different reasons. On an Antarctic voyage the majority of people are here for the wildlife, specifically penguins but they’ll take as many albatross, whales and seals as we can deliver. Then there are the history buffs and those seeking the ice. Finally we have the few who don’t care about Antarctica […]

Antarctic legend laid to rest In a moving ceremony in the tiny Lutheran chapel and white-picketed graveyard in the now-derelict Grytviken Whaling Station the ashes of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s trusted lieutenant Frank Wild were finally laid to rest alongside The Boss today. Wild sailed to Antarctica four times with Shackleton between 1902 and 1922 on […]

In a moving ceremony in the tiny Lutheran chapel and white-picketed graveyard in the now-derelict Grytviken Whaling Station the ashes of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s trusted lieutenant Frank Wild were finally laid to rest alongside The Boss today. Wild sailed to Antarctica four times with Shackleton between 1902 and 1922 on the Discovery, the Nimrod, the […]

I had a drink with Frank Wild tonight. There were a few of us there, old shipmates and new. It was in the Ioffe’s expedition room with the whole staff of One Ocean, the six members of the Wild family onboard, Alexandra Shackleton, Ron Naveen from Oceanites, Angie Butler and Rev Richard and his wife. […]

Today was a big day for the voyage. For today, the instigator of the whole Wild project (if a reburial can be called that) spoke on her quest. And seven years work was very clearly a quest or an obsession. Angie Butler has revealed all but the very last steps of her search in her […]

Several of the ship’s company were guests of honour at Government House today. With our need to sail for South Georgia by mid-afternoon, morning tea (with scones, jam and cream) was provided in the quite impressive reception hall. It was hosted by acting Governor, Mr Ric Nye and attended by Richard McKee, South Georgia’s Executive […]

Today I was on West Point Island in the Falklands, down at the Devil’s Nose where a bare patch of rock and dirt is noisily cohabited by a profusion of rockhopper penguins and black-browed albatross. It’s a remarkable sight, particularly when a clumsy albatross flight path clips a few yellow penguin crests or a penguin […]

I write this as we approach the western side of the Falkland Islands. The ocean and winds have been kind to us today, pushing us on with a following sea. Tomorrow we’ll be making our first landings for the voyage. Our mandatory briefings on what to do in Zodiacs and IAATO’s responsible tourism behaviour in […]

Was one of the earliest moments in PR when sailors referred to a ship “coming alive” in really bad weather? We boarded One Ocean’s Akademik Ioffe in Ushuaia the day after the ship had been hammered by a bad storm while rounding Cape Horn. Even the most stable ship in Antarctica had “come alive” and […]

In this photo taken on Sept. 24, 2010 provided by the Kaspersky ONE Trans-antarctic Expedition, British adventurer Felicity Aston skis across Iceland during a pre-expedition training trip. Aston plans to ski by herself across the Antarctica, all the way to the other side of the frozen continent. If she manages to complete this journey of […]