Not too long ago I was on board an expedition vessel in the far South of the Atlantic Ocean, somewhere in between the Falkland Islands and South Georgia - near the end of the world, I guess.
Midway between the archipelagos the waves seemed to become just higher and higher and the captain called for a meeting, letting the crew know that we had a hurricane ahead of us. He also told us, that if we were to get to South Georgia (which we were!) there was no way around the hurricane.
I was assigned as a photographer, hence I could move freely almost all over the ship, so I went to the bridge in the early evening. I liked the captain and I guess it was mutual, so I just chit-chatted away, at some point saying (what has become my eternal mantra); “Well, the worse the weather, the better the pictures…”.
The captain just looked at me without real expression and said in a fatherly, dry way; “Be careful what you wish for, Karsten…”.
The night came and the storm grew to become a ferocious hurricane. The small ship was thrown in all directions, creating all kinds of unpleasant situations.
My thoughts remain my own, but it’s a fact that 18 passengers were injured that night, keeping the ship’s doctor occupied, as she was stitching and stitching on end while the waves were building up around us, hammering on the hull.
The night was obviously long and as the morning finally came, I decided to pay a visit to the bridge. The captain was present, and when he saw me he just repeated his comment from the night before; “Be careful what you wish for, Karsten… You might just get it”.
Well, I did get the bad weather, but all I really wanted was the pictures - they dissapered in fierce waves and the dark of night.
