Sunday 31 January, Day 17

I forgot to show the first iceberg of this cruise, when we were near South Georgia Island (in the background), before coming back to Stanley:



And while in Stanley, during the refueling, I wanted to take a shot of a sign post which I had noticed when running at the beginning of this trip. It reminds me of the sign post Marion and I had made for our wedding to symbolize our project to travel around the world for our honeymoon (which is still in its project form...):



Then we headed back past South Georgia, towards the South Sandwich Islands.
When we arrived in their vicinity, the geology team started to dredge the sea floor with the "instrument" shown below, to take some rocks and analyze the composition of the sea floor they are mapping:



Probably thinking that we were catching fish with big nets, a flock of chinstrap penguins gathered behind the stern...



... and were flying above the water to catch up with us!



Taking advantage that the ship had finally stopped for dredging, we tested the CTD (Conductivity-Temperature-Depth) system and two LADCPs (Lowered Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers), which I compared to the measurements from the shipboard ADCP (SADCP). The results were quite encouraging:



After this test and the first three dredging locations, the winds increased and the sea became quite rough again during the night and all day today. Here is how it looked like towards the bow (as seen through the lounge windows, which were covered with water droplets)...



... and towards the stern:



As Renaud would say:
"C'est pas l'homme qui prend la mer, c'est la mer qui prend l'homme, ta, ta, ta!"