(Jan 2-3, 2026)
A New Year is often greeted with the promise of new beginnings. On the boat, it seems to have almost the opposite effect as we settle deeper into the routines of our small, floating bubble, chugging across the Southern Ocean at a steady twelve knots.
Most mornings I wake up around 0630 and head to the gym for a quiet yoga session while many are still asleep. The seas have been calm so far, but balance poses remain a challenge when the floor is pitching five to ten degrees in either direction. I suspect my yoga practice will feel truly transcendent once I’m back on land and the ground agrees to stay put.
Life onboard revolves around meals. Breakfast is served from 0700 to 0730, though only a few of us make it regularly—usually me and the BAS guys. Dillon and the Aussies often drift in toward the end. We gather over coffee or tea while the seasoned Antarctic veterans trade stories from past field seasons at various stations and aboard various ships. The stories are endless: pilots who kept pet penguins on planes, lost socks specially delivered from the McMurdo laundry room to the South Pole on a C-130, rogue researchers driving snowmachines into crevasses. It’s fun to listen in and join the banter, though it can also feel repetitive each day.
After “breakie” (Australian shorthand for breakfast), we troubleshoot computer glitches in our home-grown software in preparation for upcoming radar flights and the data processing that follows. Occasionally we step outside to watch the increasingly frequent icebergs slide past. Lunch arrives far too early at 1100. We chip away at the same tasks through the afternoon, then dinner appears at 1700, right on cue. I bet this is what it feels like to live in a retirement home.
We haven’t really taken many days off yet. Most people—except Jamin and his team—seem to share a similar work ethic: what would feel like a full day’s work in the real world takes maybe two or three hours here. The rest of the day is filled with a kind of brain fog, likely induced by a night spent rolling gently across a mattress while its sharp springs dig into your ribs.
It’s hard not to feel disconnected from the world outside our bubble. WhatsApp chats with Christine, my parents, and a few close friends are comforting, but everything feels distant. It’s tough to get beyond small talk when your phone connects and disconnects from the internet every time you take three steps away from the Wi-Fi router. I’m told connectivity will improve once we reach the ice and the ship becomes more stationary. I’m hoping to manage a voice call with Christine soon. I know she’s dealing with some minor family and job stresses, and it would be nice to connect in something closer to real time.
The detachment isn’t entirely a bad thing, though. This cruise includes two embedded journalist crews who are filing stories or broadcasting content almost daily. It’s almost like there’s this glitch in our collective cognition…. We’ve literally become part of this 24-hour news / social media monolith. Yet most social media sites are blocked from reaching us (damn!), and news from the outside world coming to us feels surreal. On the morning of January 3—our first day when ship time and Mountain Time aligned—I saw headlines in the New York Times announcing that the U.S. had arrested Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, in a “Black Hawk Down”-style operation. Christine lived in Venezuela for several years and has close ties to families of Venezuelan descent. He’s undeniably a bad actor who’s treated his people horribly, but there is still an uncomfortable “ick” feeling knowing my country effectively kidnapped a foreign leader. It also struck me that this was the first time in weeks I’d really thought about national news back in the US. Since Trump began his second term about a year ago, it’s been a steady grind of chaos—tiring and often disheartening. The past few weeks have offered a welcome reprieve from that anxiety, even if it’s clear the world kept spinning for everyone I left behind.
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