Apparently Elephant Island is out there somewhere, but the weather has finally read the script: a combination of snow, wind, fog and pack ice prevents us from getting anywhere near it. It isn't possible to land there anyway – that's Shackleton's department – so we've turned northeast and begun the crossing to South Georgia, about 1000 miles distant.
There has been some excitement today, though: I was loitering on the foredeck, photographing the grey wall of weather behind which Elephant Island was lurking, when two humpback whales appeared just ahead of the ship. They hardly breached the surface, their backs appearing just for a moment to blow and then dive, and only once did one of them clear its tail, but they came right up beside the ship so that we could get a real sense of how ABSOLUTELY ENORMOUS they are. It's amazing how something so bulky can be so agile; they move as though in slow-motion. I was going to try to find a proper simile, but now I've got the phrase "a sort of maritime Mike Gatting" stuck in my head so I may as well give up.
The sea is decidedly lumpy today: the crew have discreetly (and possibly slightly sarcastically) distributed sick-bag dispensers all over the ship, so I'm going to hide in my cabin and start editing the 5,970 photos I've taken so far...
