"Now that we are sailing eastward, the strong winds we have been encountering are very much in our favor. This means we can reach the South Orkney Archipelago early this afternoon, a day ahead of schedule, which is nice... but it also means we can reach South Georgia a day ahead of schedule and that is great! Therefore, we can have five full days at South Georgia instead of the originally scheduled four days. Woo-hoo!" - (Tom Ritchie expresses the excitement of all on board.)

The M.S. ENDEAVOUR  arrived off Coronation Island, the largest island in the South Orkney Group, in the early afternoon.  We sailed along the southern coast of Coronation Island and then entered Iceberg Bay on the south side of Coronation Island (ust opposite Signy Island) and anchored near Shingle Cove. This area is famous for its icebergs, most of which are generated by the enormous Sunshine Glacier at the head of the bay. At Shingle Cove, we went  ashore and walked about experiencing a usual assortment of penguins, skuas, fur seals, and wieners. Yes, wieners. This is the affectionate name given to adolescent elephant seals. When you see them hauled up on the beach it makes perfect sense. In addition we saw our first plant life since leaving Ushuaia almost two weeks ago. It is a very fragile ecosystem, so we were careful not to step on the greenery.  We also saw a mother skua defend her chick - usually all the other critters are defending against the skua.

There are a couple active bases located here in the Orkneys...the British have a base on Signy Island (where our ship's historian was based for two years),  which is operated by BAS, and the Argentines maintain the Orcadas Station on Laurie Island. The Orcadas base (originally called Arkady) was established by William Bruce during the Scottish Scotia Expedition of 1903 and was used as a meteorological station. It is the oldest permanently manned base in the Antarctic region.