Quote of the Day: And so ladies and gentlemen, on our present course we should reach Brazil in about a fortnight. -- Kim, our expedition leader

Journal of a Sabbatical

January 31, 2000

pitching and rolling for a thousand years and nine days

Position:

Scotia Sea
58-52 S
050-01 W

Today's Bird Sightings:
wandering albatross
black-browed albatross
gray-headed albatross
southern giant petrel
Wilson's storm petrel

Mammal Sightings:
hourglass dolphin (seen by other people but not by me)

Today's Reading: The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin

Explorer Ship's Log Entry

Last night was tough sleeping - not just sliding back and forth but actually bouncing up and becoming airborne. A weird sensation anytime but especially odd after you've just dozed off to sleep.

To say the vessel is pitching and rolling heavily would be a bit of an understatement. I thought the Drake Passage was supposed to be the killer crossing of the trip. Nobody said anything about a roller coaster ride on the Scotia Sea.

Otto (one of my fellow passengers) just said he looked at the GPS up on the bridge and it shows our estimated time of arrival at South Georgia as February 9, 3000. A thousand years and nine days! That must be some wind.

The portholes are all closed, which means we don't get any daylight in our cabin anymore. They shut them yesterday when we ran into this bad weather. The forward windows in the lounge are covered too.

Word is the winds are at Force 9 and at times Force 10 on the Beaufort scale.

Pitching and rolling heavily about describes it. It's an effort just to stay upright and make my way up the two flights of stairs to the dining room let alone the third flight up to the lecture hall.

Bob's talk on "Shackleton: Heroic Failure" this morning was quite good. The Endurance expedition didn't actually accomplish anything in terms of scientific or geographic or exploratory value. His only accomplishment on the trip was keeping his entire team alive after the mission failed when they got stuck in the ice. Was Shackleton really a hero? What is a hero? If you get yourself and others in trouble through poor planning are you a hero if you get out of it brilliantly? It seems to me that leadership is not the only skill you need to make things happen successfully. Planning and organizing are important too.

Bob mentioned talking with someone who based some kind of leadership seminar for managers on Shackleton's experience. He certainly was a leader and it was a major feat to survive 497 days on the ice, the voyage to South Georgia in a small open boat, and the climb over the mountains in South Georgia and not lose a single man. No question that's leadership. The thing is that leadership isn't management. It's only one trait or skill that managers need to have. The idea of hordes of American middle managers patterning themselves after Shackleton, now that he's having a resurgence of his 15 minutes of fame, is a little frightening. Management fads come and go fairly rapidly though, so no worries. The idea of pitching and rolling for a thousand years and nine days has clearly gotten under my skin if I'm thinking about management theory!

The storm doesn't seem to have deterred the albatrosses and the giant petrels or the way cool tiny little Wilson's storm petrels. Wind seems to be their natural element.