Neptune's Bellows

25th January 2016 Part 1
I was woken in the night with the ship pitching and rolling around, the wind was up and it was snowing. Before breakfast we crossed Neptune's Bellows to enter Deception Island. Deception Island is a dormant volcano whose crater is flooded by the sea, Neptune's Bellows is a 400m wide gap to the open sea. The centre flooded part is called a Caldera and it is 6 miles in diameter. The Caldera was formed when the volcano collapsed during a big eruption, when this occurred is unknown. I watched the crossing of the Bellows from the ships bridge. The bridge has an open policy between 8:00am and 8:00pm. In moments of difficult navigation, like the Bellows, you have to be very quiet whilst the crew work.
Our planned landing for the morning was across the other side of the island, still inside, at a place called Telefun Bay. At the planned time the wind was too strong for zodiac manoeuvres, so it was postponed an hour to see if the wind would drop.
After an hour the wind was still to strong so Kta gave a lecture on Marine mammals and what adaptations had to take place for mammals to return to the sea.
Late in the morning the wind speed inside the Caldera was still to strong to safely operate the zodiacs. This meant the landing on Deception Island was cancelled, it also means that those that were planning on taking a swim in the ice cold water during the landing will miss out.  That's OK with me as I was never planning on doing it. Any activity that means they have to put the ships doctor ashore for safety is an activity I'll not be taking part in.
Before leaving Deception Island to attempt our afternoon landing lunch will be served. The captain had decided not to leave until after lunch as the wind outside the Caldera was 40knts and the rolling of the ship will make eating lunch a difficult and a not pleasant experience.
Let's hope the weather improves for what should be our last landing of the trip. The plan is to land at Hannah Point on Livingston Island. Once we leave the Caldera it will take two hours sailing to get there so the weather could be different, but I don't hold out much hope. BTW the temperature since we arrived in Antarctica has ranged from -1 to +3C. It felt a lot warmer in the sun yesterday and it as also felt a lot colder when in the wind.
Photo shows Jan examining a baleen plate of a juvenile whale in Kta's marine mammal lecture.