Not quite underway.. but almost

After a few days in Ushuaia and now one night on the boat I'm pretty much over the exciting jetlag arising from a trip around the world and getting ready for the science and the sailing. We're on the boat, which is pretty awesome, the crew is very international and enthusiastic. The view from the boat, as below, is pretty gorgeous. And everyone is pretty stoked to be sailing soon. 

We had our very own parade to send us off, for unknown reasons they were having a parade to celebrate the Penguins of Madagascar movie. Which is a big thing in Patagonia.. as it turns out. He's a pretty curious looking lion.  

And of course, because we're looking at microplastics, here's a collection of macoplastics to get us started. For if anyone is out there wondering how plastics end up in the ocean. 

We're getting prepared for the citizen science that's going to be happening on the voyage as well. The Quixote crew are keen to contribute to some of the bigger data collection projects happening in the world. On this trip we're going to be collecting 10 samples for Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation (http://www.adventurescience.org/microplastics.html). As you can see on the map below, there aren't so many samples that have been taken in this area, so we're going to try and fill in some of the blanks as we're going. 

And right now we're waiting out some bad weather. So in the mean time, here's some photos from Ushuaia, as you can see.. they take the whole Falklands/Malvinas thing pretty seriously, don't mention the "F" word. 

And the local National Park, with the end of the last road south in South America. Not to mention with some pretty good views. 

Yesterday, when the weather on dock was delightful. 

And this is our crew prepping our boat for leaving. The weather was awesome yesterday, but at the moment we're held captive in the port by winds. The port closes in bad weather, no one can get in or out, and currently it's blowing 38 knot winds out there.. so it's pretty rocky and we're just waiting and using the last bits of internet before the wilds!

Once we get underway I'll be updating the blog via email, but won't be able to send any photos which will be a shame. But hopefully we'll hit some internet at some point along the way and it'll be possible to share some of the (hopefully) spectacular views. 
In the mean time, I'm going to go test some of my equipment whilst we wait, and fingers crossed we can exit Argentina soon!