Antarctica Day 12: Westward across the drake Passage

Had trouble waking up at 8 for breakfast, but we went, and then came back down to fall back asleep. At 11 we were woken to Cheli saying they had a meeting with information that was very important for everyone to hear. Curious as to what it was, I went well matt took a shower. Sat next to Tom and Dennis, the United pilot and his father in law, who had too much fun on the dance floor. Debating about what the very important meeting was going to be about. We have basically been cut off from the outside world, with very limited news coverage. Tom thought it was going to be something about france nuclear weaponing bombing syria. Then Cheli came out and began addressing us as a whole, "last night, our ship hit an iceberg on the stern and suffered significant damage. We are not in imminent danger, as the whole is above the water line and the crew thinks they can have the problem fixed. But in the mean time we are going to be cruising at no faster than 5 knots, and to the west to block the waves so the fixes can be worked on." "We do not know what this means for our voyage home, but we will have to continue at this pace until about midnight tonight when the repairs should be completed" "wifi and internet have been turned off, and Quark will go above and beyond to ensure everyone's travel plans are met". Then, the lightbulb went off, wow, that was the loud bang we heard last night, the iceberg ripping into the stern of the boat. We didn't find ou until later, it was a good 20 foot long skinny hole just below our 4th floor porthole windows.

Trying not to freak out, I went and told matt what was talked about. The story we figured was one of the assistant mates missed the hour in advance radar notification, and saw the iceberg at the last moment, turned, and then the rear end of the ship hit the iceberg riping the side and putting us into this problem. Not sure what flights will look like, hopefully everyone will get a flight and us standbys will be okay. We continued to nap and watch game of throwns and had lunch, then napped, and went to a presentation on solan, who worked for a summer at the southpole research facility, had a recap where we talked about mammalian mating, as well as congradulated the recently married couple, had dinner and watched across thin ice. Cheli came around during dinner and said that if we maintain the pace we are going, we may actually make it to ushuaia on time despite the gapping hole. Well see. Time to watch game of throwns and go to sleep! Last day on the hboat tomorrow. and hopefully we will be going north on the drake!

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