Well as it turned out, although not quite a millpond, there was really not much motion at all overnight. A huge disappointment. We were due to arrive at Puerto Williams at 1:00 PM so there wasn’t much more time to savor the waves.

It was our last day on board. I really wasn’t ready to get packed and be thrown off the ship just yet. However our butler had other ideas. When we returned from breakfast she had placed our suitcases on the luggage racks (none of this plastic mat on the bed for Silversea) and was offering to help with our packing. We did not take her up on her offer. I need to have total control over the packing otherwise I can never work out where anything is, or what has been left behind.

I took a break from packing to attend the morning lectures. Damon Ramsey gave a talk on Chile. It was without a doubt the best talk of the cruise, and one of the best talks we have ever attended on a cruise ship. Now I know all there is to know about Chile. It’s indeed a very interesting country.

Once the packing was done, I wandered around the ship taking photos as I realized I had not done this before.

The Explorers Lounge

This is where all of the lectures and receptions are help

Deck 6

This is where the guest relations, and the future cruise sales and the shore excursions desks are

The Spa

I never went there, but folks who did say they were impressed with the services they received.

The Library

A nice quiet place to write or read a book

Panorama Lounge

This was my favorite lounge, and we spent a lot of time here. The piano is chained to the floor, a good precaution for rough weather.

Pool Deck

The pool was open when we were in Antarctica, but they drained it while we were in the Drake Passage. The hot tubs were open all of the cruise

Observation Lounge

There is also a small library here, and the naturalist spent a lot of time here so we could discuss the wildlife outside

Forward Stairway

Dolce Vita Lounge

Photo Studio

Shops

The Restaurant

By this time it was way after 1:00 PM and we still appeared to be out in the open sea. Schalk updated us that there was a Chilean navy ship at the berth in Puerto Williams and we would only be able to dock after it left, which was expected to at 6:00 PM.

As the packing and photos were all done, we decided that we had time to go to the final team trivia in the Panorama Lounge. We were a rather small team of 2, but with the combination of easy questions and inspired guessing we ended up winning! Yay! At each of the competitions during the cruise we were able to accumulate points which could be redeemed for prizes at the end of the cruise. We had a total of 50 points, and were excited to see what we could get. One notable Cunard cruise with my friend Ruth we hadn’t done very well at the quizzes, but we did have some points to redeem, so we went to claim our winnings only to find out that they were  worth Cunard 2 pencils. The disappointing part was that they were the same pencils that Cunard provides for free in your cabin, so it wasn’t much of a prize after all.

I had higher hopes for Silversea. A T shirt and a baseball cap maybe? No such luck. The entertainment host on board before Jonathan had been very generous in his distribution of prizes, so all that was left were 3 XL T shirts. Jonathan was expecting a shipment of prizes soon, but nothing had arrived yet. If we chose not to have one of the T shirts (we chose not to have one of the T shirts), we could request a voucher that could be used on a future cruise. A sort of future cruise credit. We decided to opt for this. Who knows what exciting Silversea merchandise may be in our future?

Back in our cabin we watched the pilot board the ship. The pilot boat came alongside, and the 2 vessels travelled along at the same speed while the pilot jumped from his boat to our ship. It was very impressive. The pilot boat then sped off into the distance.

Then the big moment arrived. Pedro, the on-board photographer had been filming our journey, and we were going to watch the grand premier of the video. In the past I had been very skeptical of the DVD of your cruise that they try to sell you on other lines. They always turned out to be a stock video of the itinerary, with a few frames of the actual people on board being attacked by barbary apes or splashed on a whale watching trip. I had great hopes for this video, as every Antarctica cruise is different as the itinerary is totally dependent on the weather.

It is a very beautiful video, and we all received a free copy on a memory stick. My only concern was that there were definitely penguins on it that I did not meet, so could he have used footage from a previous trip? I suppose it really doesn’t matter; the video is a great keepsake of our wonderful trip.

After the video we were joined by all of the members of the expedition team, giving us the opportunity to thank them all. They are all so hard working. The trip just would not have been as great without their expertise and energy.

Next came the auction of the nautical chart from our cruise, showing our route from Puerto Williams to Puerto Williams. It was beautifully illustrated by one of the crew members. Bidding started at $200 and ended at over $4000. It certainly is a lovely keepsake of this amazing cruise, and the money raised goes to the crew fund, so it’s for a good cause.

Before dinner we had drinks in the Dolce Vita bar, listening to Igor on the guitar, and watching the Beagle Channel outside the window.

Then it was time for dinner in the Restaurant, and another try for the Liars Club.

This time the expedition team members were awake, and they did a great job entertaining us with their inventive definitions of obscure words.

I noticed that we were not actually docked as yet, and it was way after 6:00 PM. It turned out that the weather was too bad for us to dock, so we had been going up and down the Beagle Channel waiting for the wind to die down. Finally at 10:00 we did dock, and Schalk announced that we could go ashore if we wanted to. I did not notice a great rush to the gangway. Rather, like us, most people just headed to their cabins.

It had been a busy day, and with an early morning ahead of us, I was more than ready to get some sleep.

I sat in our cabin after we had placed our suitcases outside the door. Isn’t this the most depressing part of any cruise? I looked out of our window and saw the moon peeking through the clouds.  It’s almost a full moon. By the time we get home the full moon, the “cold full moon” will have been and gone. It’s a long way home.