Our departure from Ushuaia was scheduled for 1600 hrs but unfortunately, the winds were running 40 knots across the Beagle Channel from the southwest keeping the Splendor pinned tightly against the pier since we were moored on the south side of the pier.  The Captain and the pilot did not to risk doing any damage during departure and elected to wait until the winds died down.  Our route was going to be west through the Beagle Channel past a number of glaciers that flank the channel in valleys to the north of the channel.  Seeing them and having the opportunity to photograph them would have been a treat but, sadly, that was not to be.  As it was, the winds were slow to die down and we didn't end leaving the pier until 2230 hrs.  We headed eastward to Faro Les Eclaireus and turned to starboard around the lighthouse to get into the deeper waters of the Beagle Channel used by ships transiting the channel to the Pacific Ocean.  It was nice to watch the white flash from Faro Les Eclaireurs from our balcony as we turned around it.  Unfortunately, aside from seeing the lights or Ushuaia from the water as we were going west past the city, there was essentially nothing else to see other than the blink of the fiberglass tower at Zeballos every 4 sec marking the boarder between Argentina and Chile on the north side of the channel.

The Beagle Channel, the Darwin Pass, Timbales Pass, slid by during the night, unseen in the darkness, our vessel carrying us out into the Ballerno Channel.  The half light of the predawn carried us across the Ballerno Channel into the Brecknock Channel.   The first sunrise photo I shot the next day was the image above as we were transitioning from the Brecknock Channel into the mouth Cockburn Channel as the sun rose.  The Cockburn Channel opens to the Pacific Ocean to the west and leads to the Magdalena Channel and eventually the Strait of Magellen.  The light of the sunrise is seen streaming through the notch between the mountains in the image above beginning to light the underside of some of the clouds to the left.  The image below shows the sunrise further along that morning.  I was struck by the receeding lines of the moutain ridges in the image below and the molten feel of the oranges in the clouds above.

While we were passing through this section of the channel, we also saw some spectacular crepuscular rays streaming through a gap in the clouds creating orange beams of light across the landscape in the image below.  At the time, I didn't know that what I was seeing in the image below was just a harbinger of what was coming.

"Dawn Across the Land"

"Pools of Light"

For a time after the firey oranges of the dawn, the light was more subdued as the sun undoubted climbed through a layer of clouds giving the image above.  Nevertheless, I like the image above for the ranges of blue in the sky between the bands of clouds.  A short time later, we began getting dazzling crepuscular rays streaming through the clouds "spotlighting" portions of the landscape or the waters of the channel as seen in the selection of images below.

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"Crepuscular Silhouette"

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All good things eventually come to an end, and the crepuscular rays that I had the joy of photographing as we entered the Cockburn Channel that morning finally died out as the day continued to brighten.

As we navigated through the Cockburn Channel, after the sunrise the scenery slid by on both sides of the ship.  After breakfast, as we saw some small hanging glaciers off to the starboard side of the ship from the balcony of our stateroom.  There are several photos from these small glaciers below.  You'll note that the ice has a pronounced blue color to it near the bottom of the glacier in several of the photos.  This is old ice... ice that has probably been there for 100 years or more in some cases, working its way down the glacier as it flows down the side of the mountain that it calls home.

click image above for a larger view

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click image above for a larger view

The Brecknock Channel has some twists and turns to it.  Later into the morning, the ship turned to starboard and then we rounded King Island off the starboard side as we began to approach the entrance to the Magdalena Channel.  King Island has a small channel light on the southeast tip of the island.  The channel light is shown in the two photos above.

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As you leave the Magdalena Channel to enter the Strait of Magellan, there is another small channel light on the east side of the Magdalena Channel that is shown in the photo above and to the left.

The two images above were generated using NASA's World Wind 1.4 software with Geocover 2000.  The view on the left looks straight down on Cape Froward.  The view on the right is tipped to an angle to give you a better feel for the topography of the area.  The Cross of the Seas stands atop the small peak indicated by the red arrow in the image above on the right.  Punta Arenas would be somewhere off the top of the page to the left in the image on the right.

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The first good image that I managed to shoot of the Cross of the Seas was after we had passed Cape Froward and were sailing north toward Punta Arenas.  The image to the left was shot off the stern of the Splendor as we sailed northeast in the Del Hambre Pass and you can see the white Cross of the Seas atop the peak.

Earlier images shot when were coming out of the mouth of the Magdalena Channel were quite hazy and the light made it difficult to see the cross at all.

In the late afternoon, after departing Punta Arenas after the ship had cleared Chilean immigration, the Cross of the Seas was dramatically silhouetted atop Cape Froward as seen in the image below.  Although it is somewhat harder to pick out, the Cape Froward channel light is also visible at the bottom of the image.

The image above was taken from the same location as the previous image albeit with a 'slight' change in focal length going from a wide angle to long telephoto at 600 mm.  In this image you can begin to see the open tubular steel construction of the Cross of the Seas.  This is the third cross constructed atop this mountain.   The first cross was built in 1913 of cast iron, stood about 30 feet high, and collapsed in the strong winds that sweep these peaks in 1930.   The second cross was built in 1944 of reinforced concrete and stood about 65 feet tall.  That cross succumbed to earth tremors and the harsh weather in 1956.  The third and present Cross of the Seas is constructed of a lattice of tubular steel to allow the winds to flow through it rather than pushing against it.  The cross was constructed in 1987 to commemorate the visit of Pope John Paul II to Chile.  It stands about 79 feet tall and the arms are 33 feet across.  The cross is oriented due north-south.

click image above for a larger view

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Ultrawide angle view of Cape Froward (on the right) the southernmost point of the continent of South America.  This photograph was shot after we had rounded Cape Froward and were sailing westward in the Strait of Magellan.

Normally, cruise ships sailing the Strait of Magellan that stop in Punta Arenas sail late enough from Punta Arenas that passengers only get to see the Cross of the Seas at twilight.  Since our 'shore leave' in Punta Arenas had to be canceled because of the very late departure out of Ushuaia the night before, while we didn't get to Magdalena Island to see the lighthouse and the magellanic penguin colony there, we did get to see the Cross of the Seas in the beautiful light of the late afternoon.  I guess life does have it's tradeoffs...