Of the bitter cold and blustery Antarctic Peninsula, Alexander Macklin once proclaimed: "A more inhospitable place could scarcely be imagined."
Having arrived there 83 years later, Steve Hawk proclaimed it to be "stunningly beautiful--just shocking."
Indeed, such a unique and surreal surfing experience could scarcely be imagined.
Macklin was a surgeon during what was billed as the British Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, an exploratory endeavor that began in 1914. He had lots of work, mostly amputating the frostbitten fingers and toes of fellow explorers.
Their sailing vessel, the HMS Endurance, trapped by ice as winter set in, drifted for 10 months before buckling under the pressure of advancing floes. Expedition members lived on the ice for an additional five months before escaping to Elephant Island in smaller boats they had been able to salvage.
They remained on Elephant Island--first they ate their sled dogs, then later survived on stew made from seaweed and dug-up seal bones--while Sir Ernest Shackleton, the explorer who led the expedition, and five others sailed 800 miles across the Scotia Sea to South Georgia Island. Shackleton, who made the first land crossing of that island to find help, led four relief expeditions before finally reaching and rescuing the 22 men he had left behind. Remarkably, all of them survived.
As for Hawk, life's not so rough.
He and seven other surfers, along with the skipper and crew of the 65-foot sailing vessel, Golden Fleece, set out on a monthlong odyssey Feb. 1 from Ushuaia, Argentina--the southernmost city in the world.
After their first frigid session in shoulder-high left-breaking waves at Elephant Island on Monday, Hawk called The Times via satellite phone and remarked that this historic expedition, though it basically had just gotten underway, was sailing along smoothly. The night before, the surfers had enjoyed fine wine and a dinner of chicken sauteed in a creamy cognac sauce.
The waves were smaller than they had expected, but there are bound to be bigger days. Besides, Hawk said, surfing is secondary in a place so magnificent. Flanking the Golden Fleece was a 700-foot cliff, barren and black, almost shadow-like. The waves took them toward a blue-green glacier, rising 300 feet and spanning the mile-wide base of the bay, calving every half-hour or so, sending huge slabs of ice cascading into the sea.
Penguins, which lined the shore of Elephant Island, were porpoising through the lineup and hauling out on distant icebergs, looking like "black ants on blue Formica."
"It's an unbelievable place," Hawk said. "It's like surfing on the moon."
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The so-called "heroic era" of Antarctic exploration led many pioneers to the bottom of the world in the early 1900s, in search mostly of scientific and geographic knowledge, but also of adventure.
They were hardy souls who endured brutal living conditions for weeks and months on end, without electronics or electricity, with only basic supplies for sustenance and survival. Those aboard Endurance, without doubt, endured hardships almost beyond belief and theirs is an incredible tale of human survival.
It was their plight, in large part, that inspired Mark "Doc" Renneker to dream up a surfing expedition to Antarctica. Renneker, 47, is a Bay Area physician and one of the more respected regulars at Maverick's, a notorious big-wave break near Santa Cruz.
"He just got a wild hair and had to go to what he called the unsurfed continent," Hawk said.
He got really serious about it after reading Alfred Lansing's book: "Endurance--Shackleton's Incredible Adventure" (Carroll & Graf, $12.95). The book, based largely on accounts of surviving members of the expedition, makes reference to large swells and shows old photographs in which waves can be seen peeling off rocky points.
With Hawk, a renowned Southern California surfing journalist, and Renneker are Keith Block, 48, a physician from Evanston, Ill.; Kevin Starr, 39, a physician from San Francisco; Art Brewer, 49, a noted surf photographer from Dana Point; Chris Malloy, 28, a pro surfer from Ventura; Sedge Thomson, 48, of San Francisco, and Edwin Salem, 39, of Costa Rica.
Captain of the steel-hulled sailboat is veteran Antarctic sailor, Jerome Poncet, 47, a Falkland Islands rancher who stocked the vessel with fresh beef and poultry, as well as homemade sausages that have been hugely popular, Hawk said, "for the meat-eaters among us."
The surfers almost literally, then, are living high on the hog at the bottom of the planet. The Golden Fleece is well-heated and well-equipped, with state-of-the-art navigational equipment, a VCR, a satellite phone and even the capability to send and receive e-mail, which Hawk says makes all eight members feel closer to home.
Like so many great adventures of the last decade, theirs is being chronicled on the Internet with photos and dispatches at http://www.quokka.com.
