February 3 - The Beagle Channel and Ushuaia, Argentina

If you have a copy of my itinerary, you may be thinking “are they lost?”  No, yesterday evening the captain came on the PA system and told us that we were changing our plans.  Evidently there is a significant storm in the Drake Passage, so rather than sailing across it today (Friday) we sailed for the Beagle Channel and are stopping in Ushuaia, Argentina.  It’s a little after 2 PM and we should anchor there in about an hour.  The plan is for us to stay overnight and sail tomorrow morning when hopefully the storm will have abated a bit.

It's overcast with occasional drizzle and around 50° so not too cold. The scenery this morning was really spectacular.  Part of the channel is called Glacier Alley which is a very fitting name.  There are five tidewater glaciers named after five European countries and many hanging glaciers which don’t come down to sea level.  We passed several big waterfalls, some connecting two glaciers. I confess that I’m not sorry about the change in itinerary because we wouldn’t have been able to see this otherwise.  Ushuaia is a nice little city too with lots of shopping.  I’m planning to tender ashore for a little while at least.

These are probably more pictures of the channel than I should post, but I'm in love with this area. At times it looks mysterious with low clouds or mist; at other times it's forbidding or majestic.

And here are more because I can't resist.

Another change of plans.  We’re here at Ushuaia and there are some pretty significant seas running with lots of little whitecaps.  I don’t think tendering ashore is in our future. I looked down and can see the tender platform is still down, but there’s no sign  any boats are in the water.  In the last hour we’ve had a couple of squalls; now we’ve got partly cloudy skies with a lovely rainbow off my side (port) of the ship. I got a couple of photos of it and out on my veranda it is cold!!.  According to the weather on the TV it’s 52° but the wind is blowing about 30mph so it feels a lot colder.  

I hope the rainbow is a good omen for our crossing of the Drake Passage tomorrow. Fingers crossed!

I have to upload just one more picture because I see vistas like this all around the ship except off our stern where the city of Ushuaia is.  It's truly majestic around here.