My Cruise ship hit an iceberg!
 

In November, I completed one of my bucket list trips by visiting Antarctica.
The trip was everything I hoped for, including beautiful scenery and wildlife including thousands of penguins. The trip is well described in other trip reports.

However, on our return to Argentina, we had the additional excitement of the cruise ship striking an iceberg. The iceberg tore a 9 meter opening in the ship's hull. Fortunately, the opening was above the water line, so we weren't in any immediate danger. (Managed to avoid the Titanic experience!). The crew worked all day to repair the damage and that night we were able to resume our return trip to Argentina. Thankfully the crew had the knowledge and all of the needed materials to repair the ship. We were able to return safely to port.

However the ship was taken to Uruguay for repairs.

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Here is a picture of the ship in port

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^^ Were you on the Quark ship? I know within a week there were problems with 2 ships--the Quark ship that hit the iceberg and the Ponant ship (Le Boreal) that had a fire when they were only on their way there.

I was nervous that bad things come in threes as we were scheduled on the Ponant sister ship L'Austral Dec 29. Luckily, we've gone and come back with no problem.

Hope your trip was fantastic--ours was. What an unbelievable place!!

Yes, I was on the Quark Ocean Endeavour.

The trip was a wonderful adventure! Here is a blog about the whole trip (by one of my fellow travelers). The iceberg only gets a mention at the end.

http://doublejdownunder.blogspot.com...-kayaking.html

You were on L'Austral Dec. 29 as well?!

Loved your trip report!!

We are much older than you :) so we were not quite as active--no kayaking nor polar plunging on the Ponant ships lol. We were able to do a lot of hiking and stopped at a lot of the same stops as you. I agree that penguin watching is awesome--they are the most fun, delightful creatures to watch!! They really are hilarious at times.

It's an amazing place. So hard to describe and the pictures do not do it justice. We often felt like we were on another planet.

And justforfun-- yes we were!

You're the 4th person I now know who was on that cruise.

Quark's Sea Advenrurer completed its Christmas / New Year cruise on one and a half engines. It had a broken diesel injector which made for most (un)impressive smoke trails in the pristine environment in Antarctica :td:

Fortunately we made it back without mishap, but if our good engine died, it might have been a very stressful time for all ( and late arrival ).

Wow! I was on this boat two weeks ago!!

The captain was really into breaking through ice. I have an amazing video of us going through a massive ice sheet with penguins and seals running for their lives.

I'm not surprised he hit an iceberg. Glad everyone was safe. I know most of the staff there, will have to contact them via email!

Glad everyone was safe!

Wow, amazing and so exciting. Hope your trip was a good one!

Wow, you all were lucky that the opening was above the waterline. Hope there were enough lifeboats on board anyway.

And it's a small world after all - I was on the L'Austral on that voyage as well. One day I will get around to writing a TR!

It's a small world indeed. My count is up to 5 FTers on that ship. When you think there were only 240 or so on the ship, that's a significant representation.

We need a badge to wear so we can identify each other! We could have had an ongoing mini-do if we'd known!