The lousy weather of two days ago messed up our itinerary bigtime, but everything worked out great in the end. The original plan called for us to land at Whaler’s Bay on Deception Island on Friday morning, then head north to Half Moon Island to see the chinstrap penguins in the afternoon. From there we would head through the Antarctic Sound and visit a colony of Adélie penguins at Paulet Island on Saturday morning, in the afternoon visit Brown Bluff and make a true continental landing.

But the snowstorm and high winds on Friday stranded us at Deception Island for most of Friday. The captain had to cancel the Half Moon Island visit, and then had to cancel the Paulet Island visit, but we still held out hope we could at least visit Brown Bluff.

But then when we entered the Antarctic Sound yesterday morning (right around the time I was visiting the bridge), the winds kicked up ferociously. The expedition leader later showed us a visual of the Beaufort Scale and pointed to the worst possible category—hurricane force—and said that that’s what we experienced. Trees would have been flying, he said Read more