Brisvegas Baby

As a final chapter to this story, I feel like I need to mention Brisbane, Australia. But first, I want to talk about how we got off ship.

We spent a few days anchored off the coast of Brisbane since the port was not ready for our slightly early arrival. This was fine by us, it meant that we got to hang out in the tropical sun and enjoy summertime off the gold coast for a while longer. This was also the opportune time to test our life saving equipment on board.

MOTOR BOAT (crewed by the 3rd mate, 3rd engineer, and the Deck Cadet, Brittany)

We kept insisting that we could jump over the side to be the man-overboard dummy (the water was gorgeous) but we were told that there were sharks. As it turns out, they weren't kidding.

Our final night on board was spent packing and cleaning our rooms. By chance we ran into the first engineer who told us about the dolphins and sharks playing around our ship.

Fish like to gather under anchored ships during the day for the shade, and are attracted to the light cast off by the ship at night. The more appropriate word rather than play might have been feeding frenzy.

There were atleast 8+ dolphins and a shark just circling around our ship. You can distinguish a shark from a dolphin in that it's tale moves from side to side rather than up and down.

I did try to take photos, but it was too dark out for my camera to be effective. But to give you an idea of how well we could see these dolphins... Kate and I are pretty sure we saw one that was rather excited.

Attempted Dolphin Photography (This was a group of four...)

Since we didn't have a gangway since we were still anchored in water, a pilot boat was scheduled to come get the crew that was leaving. This was a lot of fun, our luggage were lowered onto the deck using line, and we ourselves got to shimmy down a pilot ladder (like a rope ladder you see in a movie) and found ourselves cruising across the blue waters of the gold coast in a 4 meter motor boat.

With customs and a drive into Brisbane, we didn't get to our hotel until around 1430. But wow, was the room rooms suite splendid! It was essentially four rooms (living area, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom) with two balconies.

Awesome Midnight Swim

The Waterfront Where We Had Dinner With The Crew

After a fun night, our flight left at 11am with the ultimate destination of Newark, New Jersey and a total 18+ hours of airtime.

Brisbane --> LA --> Dallas --> Newark

And that concludes my adventure to and from Antarctica.
 

Again, I want to thank everyone who made this possible, and say thank you to the awesome crew on board the Maersk Peary, who really made this sea term an incredible experience.