What an amazing year it's been for me… January 2005 Sumatra, June 2005 Greenland, and now in the Southern Ocean. Which freak gets to go to the Arctic for summer and then onto Antarctica for summer in the same year? Two cold summers in one year??? At Greenpeace one never knows what one's going to get. But I can bet on it…you can't get it anywhere else.

I was shrieking in Greenland at the littlest iceberg. I am silenced here… The ocean is so mighty, making me feel so small. The birds that fly around us make me feel trapped… The sun is as distant as land. I tried asking Arne our captain how big the Southern Ocean really is. And he just shrugged…somebody surely has it figured out he said…I was left staring at the map, following the Southern Ocean stretching along the planet uninterrupted. Wild mighty ocean, the mother of them all... I am but a tiny little creature awestruck.

Life on board is strange...its not like sailing to anywhere else…the Southern Ocean…churns, churning all the water and air...and us. Quite literally and not just physically.

Sleep eluding us all…makes us raw…tender... The mind and heart too swim around... too much work just trying to keep a thought in place...hats off Lally...you doing your blogs in bad weather!!!

But how the balance returns once the sea calms… How can we forget that we are a part of this magnificent act of creation? We are living it Breathing it Every moment.

I wouldn't be anywhere else in the world right now, no matter what. So bring on the hardship, bring on the struggle...for no beauty comes without some pain.

From the Arctic Sunrise