Day 13/35: Saturday, February 8, 2020: En Route to Ushuaia, Argentina

We are sailing the Drake Passage toward Ushuaia over night. The water was relatively chopping and there was quite a bit of "movement" overnight. It is a bit smoother this morning, but there is still some large dips and rows. The original plan was to dock in Ushuaia tomorrow around noon and depart at 6:30 pm. Now it appears we will dock this evening, between 10:00 and 10:30 pm and depart at 7:00 pm Sunday evening. Tomorrow, we have an excursion "Ushuaia, The Prison & The End of the World". Originally scheduled for 1:45 pm, today I learned it has been moved up to 9:00 am. This is due to the fact that another cruise ship will be arriving in port tomorrow morning. This ship carries about 2,000 guests and they wanted to avoid any "traffic jams" with that ship.

Ushuaia is a resort town in Argentina. It's located on the Tierra del Fuego archipelago, the southernmost tip of South America, nicknamed the “End of the World.” The windswept town, perched on a steep hill, is surrounded by the Martial Mountains and the Beagle Channel. It's the gateway to Antarctica cruises and tours to nearby Isla Yécapasela, known as “Penguin Island” for its penguin colonies.

We visited Ushuaia last December on our Viking cruise from Buenos Aires to Valparaiso. This is where I found the carved Inca Rose lion I gave to a dear friend. We'll see what we find this time.

This afternoon, we attended a tour of the Bridge. The Captain gave us his undivided attention for 45 minutes. This is a relatively old ship, approaching 20 years, and it doesn't have all the fancy high tech displays and consoles as some I have seen. One notable difference from other bridge tours I have taken is the total absence of seats for the crew to use. They stood their entire watch. They also had a "dead man" button which they were required to push at least every 12 minutes. Otherwise, an alarm would go off indicating the bridge was unmanned for some reason, dead crew...or more likely asleep crew.

Shortly after Maria came on board, she remarked how delightful she found the quality of the water and wondered why. We inquired and today, someone came to discuss the water used on board ship. The ship has a potable water tank which holds up to 1,000 tons of water. The consumption of water varies between 200 and 400 tons per day, depending primarily on whether we are at sea or in port. The ship can bring water on board from the shore or it can produce its own fresh water from sea water using a reverse osmosis system. The RO system has a capacity of roughly 400 tons per day. Depending on where they are in the world, often they prefer to not bring water from the shore so that they can control the quality of that water. The RO water is very soft and is adjusted for pH (7.0-7.4) and has chlorine added (0.2 and 5.0 ppm). If they do bring water on board from shore, it is tested by the Nurse before bringing it on board. The use of mostly RO water seems odd to me because it would be extremely soft. I have not noticed the normal tell-tale feel of very soft water however. They may do more than just control the pH and add chlorine.

It was along about 3:30 pm that we sighted land, Tierra del Fuego (Land of Fire).