Aboard the Lawrence M. Gould

The LMG is the smaller of the two icebreakers the US Antarctic program leases for its marine operations around Antarctica. (The larger--the Nathaniel B. Palmer (aka the NBP)--is too large to dock at Palmer; to remedy that and make Palmer access more flexible, all science will pause at Palmer the summer of 2021-22 for the build-out of a new pier that can host the NBP.)

But in the meantime, only the LMG can take passengers to Palmer. Once I got to know it, it felt like a cozy-enough ship. It has a lounge...

...and of course a galley...

...and a bunch of cute staterooms, each with a bathroom.

The problem, for me, was that there were more of us (the ship crew, the Palmer summer station support crew, and two scientists coming down early) than there were stateroom spaces. And the way they increase passenger capacity is by creating berthing in the cargo hold, in shipping containers outfitted with bunk beds.

Since I was one of the few support staff on the ship who had never been to Palmer, my lowly status earned me a bunk in the cargo hold, along with the two female scientists. It was clear to me everyone else knew what a miserable situation this was going to be, because people in the staterooms kept telling me that being in the hold is actually great because it's a smoother ride through the Drake (the rocking of the boat being less intense on lower decks of the boat). But I couldn't help but notice that none of the people who were in staterooms chose to relocate to the open bunks in the cargo hold. And there was a reason for that. It was miserable. The station manager tried to help the three of us in this container out by giving us a container with a bathroom, so that we didn't have to climb the stairs up to the main deck every time we needed to pee. But that ended up backfiring because the plumbing in the bathroom didn't work and it ended up leaking all over and stinking up the container the whole trip. Plus the sound of the ship's engines was incredibly loud down in the cargo hold, we did end up having to climb the dangerous staircase up to the main deck every time we needed to pee (a seriously precarious task while we were rocking and rolling our way through the Drake, so that it felt safer to just stay on the upper decks as much as possible, negating any potential benefit of having a "room" on a lower deck), there was so little space in the container that if one person needed to walk through, the others had to get into their bunks to let her pass, and all we had to hold our stuff was a gym locker each.

But, that was just how it was for the nine nights we spent living on the LMG (the last night of our time in Punta Arenas, the five nights at sea--rather than three because of a late departure and a rough passage across the Drake--and three more nights once we arrived at Palmer). One of those things about Antarctic adventures you just have to suck up!

I was finally starting to get to know my way around the ship as we navigated along Tierra del Fuego (if you have really good eyes or can expand this picture, you can see our route starting in yellow and then turning red)...

...and kept wary eyes on the weather forecast for the Drake passage. The downward-pointing beige bit coming from the top of the frame in the picture below is southern South America, the little bit of beige coming up from the bottom of the frame is the peninsula of Antarctica, the space between them is the Drake Passage, and the color red is bad news!

And so we braced ourselves for an "extra adventure-y" voyage south!