So it’s official. “The Little Red Ship” has officially become not only the first ship to carry tourists across the Drake Passage to Antarctica, it has also become the first ship to sink there.

This photo (Credits: Chilean Air Force, via European Pressphoto Agency) shows The Explorer on its side surrounded by ice floes.


I can’t even begin to tell you how utterly saddened I am by this… I was just telling my sister this morning that it’s not just that I was excited about my upcoming trip to Antarctica (after over a decade of dreaming about it), but I was also excited about the fact that I was going to be going on The Explorer. “The Little Red Ship” has such a history down there, and I was excited by the prospect of going on this trip with such a historic little red engine that could.

So now what? This is the question that still remains unanswered. GAP is going to have to figure out what they’re going to do with the other trips that were scheduled to go this season… My guess is that they’re going to have to cancel them and possibly offer to rebook at another time. I’m hoping that this doesn’t mean I won’t be able to go for another year - especially since I’ve already been waiting over a year for this trip! (For those that don’t know the details, I booked this trip last December). Either way, it’ll be fine, I’ll just be immensely disappointed, as you might imagine.

Why not just book on another company? Well, couple of reasons. Typically these trips book up months and months in advance and I’m already down to only 90 days-ish before my trip is set to leave. Also, GAP was by far the most affordable for this trip. Other companies charge twice as much (or more) for the same trip and I couldn’t possibly afford that - not without some serious budgeting and time to plan.

So there it is. I’ll wait to hear from GAP as I’m sure they’ll start going through and contacting all of the guests they’ve booked for the rest of this season and see what they propose doing. This should be interesting.