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| Icebergs in the bay. |
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| A penguin tries to recall whether it left the gas on. |
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| The penguins spend a lot of time just standing around. |
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| This is because they can't hold phones with their flippers. |
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| They also do a fair amount of clambering up rocky surfaces they appear barely equipped for. |
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| More or less underneath the centre of the ship, you can see a penguin that's adopted a common strategy for tolerating the cold wind, which is to fold their head down, making them look headless. |
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| Our home for the duration. You can't see our cabin because it's in the middle. |
The Zodiac is the workhorse of the Antarctic. First created by the French company Zodiac Nautic in the '30s, they are durable and easily maintainable. You will have seen them before. They were first brought to public attention when famed underwater documentarian Jacques Cousteau started using them in the '60s. They also became popular with the military so you've probably seen them disgorge black-clad soldiers ready to storm beaches in action films too.
There was no storming of beaches on this expedition, although there were some beaches. One of the Zodiac's most useful traits is that it can be landed in widely-ranging environments. Being a flat-bottomed inflatable boat, beach landings are fairly simple, but they can also sidle up alongside rocks where no beach is available.
The tough inflatable hull of a Zodiac is divided into compartments. This means that it can survive multiple punctures without losing buoyancy. This was in fact put to the test one morning when a leopard seal took an interest in one of the Zodiacs. This wasn't the one I was on, but radio chatter between the different boat crews made it clear that something interesting was going on. Leopard seals are the apex predator of the Antarctic, and while they rarely attack people, it's worth treating them with healthy respect. As nice as it is to see one up close, they can be unpredictable and on this day what nobody predicted was that one would chomp down on a Zodiac.
Needless to say this burst a section of the Zodiac and although there was no immediate danger to anyone on board, they returned to the ship because you can't take risks in Antarctica.
Unfortunately the leopard seal judged the Zodiac to be extremely tasty. Or maybe it just liked the feeling of sinking its teeth into the hull. Perhaps it's like our compulsion to pop bubblewrap? Whatever the seal's motivation, it went on a serial boat-eating spree and took a total of 7 of the fleet of 24 Zodiacs out of service. The rest of the boats also returned to the ship at this point as it was clear the seal had found the Antarctic version of Pringles and once it had popped it wasn't going to stop.
As a testament to the Zodiac's maintainability and to the hard work of the ship's crew, all punctured boats were patched up and back in service the next day.
Also adding to the craft's reliability is the outboard motor. This is something that can be easily fixed on board the ship if necessary, and while the propellor would frequently get ice jammed in it when pushing through brash ice, it was a simple if tedious process to clear it with what is essentially a big stick.
We rode in the Zodiacs sitting on their sides. There were typically four of us on each side, with the driver at the back with the motor. Once on board they feel fairly stable. Sitting on the side with your feet firmly planted inside, your centre of gravity is low and you'd probably have to try quite hard to fall out. When going at speed in bad weather you may be less certain, and for that there are ropes around the sides to cling on to.
Getting on and off them was another matter however. A sensible protocol has been developed for boarding, which is done from steps leading from the hull of the ship. You grip the arm of someone on the ship side, hand to elbow, then step onto the Zodiac where another crew member takes your other arm. In theory you are safely handled from ship to boat and therefore can't fall into the sea. In practice there is a huge flaw in this method in that there was no consistency as to which arm was taken first, which occasionally lead to some uncomfortably fast adjustments. Still, nobody fell in that I know about. Over dinner with one of the crew at the end of the cruise we asked whether anyone ever did fall in, Oh, they said with a laugh, all the time.
They were probably talking about getting ashore from a Zodiac, which employed a similar system to boarding, but often in less perilous conditions. These landings could be as easy as climbing into the shallow waters of a beach, or as difficult as clambering onto wet rocks as the boat is pulled this way and that by chopping waves. In either case disembarkation was far from graceful as your movement is quite restricted by all the gear you're wearing, which includes a heavy life-vest in case it all goes disastrously wrong.
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