Stonington Island (-68.1833330, -66.9999999)

Our evening briefing tells us all about the landing planned for the following morning. Once more the weather and waves conspired to rip up the plan for the day. When we woke up, we were on station near Red Rock Ridge all set for today's landing. It was obvious however when we headed to breakfast that it was very swelly indeed. (Swell! = good, Swelly… not so much.) It was a beautiful area and had lovely views from the ship, but in addition to the swell, the landing area was iced up. Red Rock Ridge was not meant to be. This was the lowest point we reached on the expedition and we farewelled Marguerite Bay and motored on. In fairness, the penguins were probably not unduly disappointed.

A couple of hours later we arrived at Stonington Island - named after Stonington, Connecticut. We saw the USA East Base from a distance. Once more we were fortunate to be able to visit a historic monument/museum in the form of British Base E - fascinatingly preserved and sitting just 200 metres from the USA base. We even signed the visitors book for posterity. The original base was on this spot from 1939 to 1941 and sledging teams were based there from 1946-1950. The original base burned down in the 1950s and a new two story base was built around 1960 and operated until 1975.

We returned in the afternoon but this time, to a new landing site, first time used and now christened Yibo's Cove - after our fearless expedition leader who scouted it out this morning. This was our first continental landing on the mainland - the Antarctic continent. We had our photo taken and have officially now visited every continent on the planet. It was snowing by the time we returned to the ship. We had a casual dinner at Fredheim and adjourned to the cabino.

Plans for tomorrow? According to the briefing we'll be passing back through The Gullet - all 11 miles of scenery and an exploration day is planned for tomorrow with some possible zodiac cruising near Fish Island. We are still one of only 3 groups that made it out kayaking on Monday (24 people in total). Kayaking has been cancelled ever since and the camping is still waiting to go out. Lucky - that's us.