Day 12 · December 31, 2027 · The Antarctic Peninsula
If you step out on deck at midnight on New Year’s Eve, you will still be able to see the mountains.
December is high summer down here. The ship is near 64 degrees south, ten days past the solstice.
The sun does set. It drops below the horizon somewhere around eleven and comes back a few hours later.
In between, it never sinks far enough for real night. The sky goes the color of a long evening and stays there.
Sleeping in constant daylight
Cabins have blackout curtains for a reason.
Midnight looks like late afternoon at home. The water is lit. The ice is lit. You can read the time on your watch on an open deck without a light.
New Year’s Eve on a ship
There is a countdown. There is music. There is a room full of people who boarded together eleven days ago.
Then somebody opens a door to the outside, and the whole thing changes.
Out there the air is a few degrees above freezing at the end of December. The ice is pale in the low light. Ships are the only human thing for a very long way in any direction.
That is what is outside the door when the year turns.
Antarctica has no time zone
Antarctica has no time zone of its own. Nobody assigned one, because nobody lives here permanently.
The crew keeps the ship on its own clock. The countdown ends when the captain says it does.
Next: New Year’s Day in the ice
New Year’s Day, still in the ice, and the last full day before the ship turns north.
