Peter I Island and the Bellingshausen Sea

From the Antarctic Peninsula, it is approximately 120 degrees of longitude westward to the destination in New Zealand. The highlights of our journey are located in the Ross Sea, which is situated south of New Zealand. So, we had to make some progress and head west.

First, we crossed the Bellingshausen Sea. The weather was bad for the next 2 days, which was doubly bad because there was nothing to see (and photograph), and the not-so-fast ship (10 knots = about 20 km/h is the standard cruising speed, for a distance of 6,500 nautical miles = about 12,000 km it is somewhat undersized) was now moving even slower. As a result, we needed an extra day to reach the next waypoint - the island dedicated to Tsar Peter the Great, 'Peter I Island' - than planned.

Fortunately, when we arrived, the wind had died down and the waves were bearable, so the not-so-common operation of 'landing on the island' took place for us. With our 3 helicopters, all 87 passengers and part of the crew were flown to the island in shifts and could take a look around there. The return flight was then designed as a sightseeing event with an island tour.
Now we can count ourselves among the fewer than 1,000 people who have ever set foot on this little island in the middle of nowhere. Speaking of 'in the middle of nowhere' - assuming that we were the only ship between the Antarctic Peninsula and the Ross Sea, the nearest human beings were to be found on the ISS - 400 km above us - everyone else, however, was over 1,000 km away...

On the continued journey through the Bellingshausen Sea, we now saw smaller, larger, and even very large icebergs - some over 100 meters long and surely 30, 40, 50 meters high...very impressive. Especially when the sun was shining (which fortunately happened more often now), the illuminated icebergs looked beautiful in the blue water. To break things up, the occasional whale passed by as well.