It started to get light around 2 AM this morning. When I got up around 6:30, we were still out in the ocean and there were about 8 foot waves. By the time BJ got up, an hour later, you could begin to see some land in the distance. During breakfast we started toward the archipelago, and by 10 AM we were beginning to really see some of the peaks and the ice.

These look like black and white photos, but they aren’t. Gray sky, great water and mostly white ice. If the ice is compressed enough and all the air bubbles are forced out, the ice can take on a bluish quality as a result of the other frequencies of light being absorbed.

We saw a fair number of birds, but they are fast and hard to catch on camera. Also, BJ thinks I’m gaslighting her, but I have seen a lot of whales. All you see is a black spot which is the hump and then a spout and then it disappears before BJ can look. She is frequently at a different viewing angle from me and by the time we try to adjust for parallax, the whale has sounded. This has happened at least 6 times this evening.

Lunch was just some sandwiches which I will not show, but dinner was Italian tonight and so we had little eggplant parmesan starters and then I had rockfish with caponata and BJ had veal marsala. I had the Tiramisu and she had a hazelnut semifreddo.

After dinner we went back to the cabin and watched for another hour or two. More whales, or gaslighting. And then we passed by Brabant Island and returned to the ocean until tomorrow morning.