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Kindness and Hope
The boat grew quiet, and seasickness took hold. Several people leaned overboard to vomit. Paisola found an old Dramamine tablet in her camera case and told her aunt to open her mouth. She and Van Horne then passed out some extra hand warmers they'd brought along. "Keep the circulation going!" Van Horne called out.There were other small acts of kindness as they drifted in the cold. Eli Charne, 38, a photographer from Irvine, California, had fled his flooding cabin when the Explorer hit the ice, leaving behind all his camera equipment. He found himself in the lifeboat without a stitch of waterproof clothing. A passenger gave him one of his gloves, and another shared a blanket. Next to him, two women encouraged him to wiggle his hands and feet. "I was so weak, I couldn't stop shivering," says Charne. "But any help that anybody offered gave you hope."
Paisola raised spirits when she rolled out a yellow rain poncho. Her shipmates had teasingly called her Superman for wearing the billowing cape on excursions to view penguins and seals. But in the lifeboat, as many as a dozen passengers found protection under the enormous slicker.
Hunkered down in the bow, White spotted two crew members approaching in an inflatable raft. The pair tossed over a rope so they could tow the disabled lifeboat behind them. White wouldn't need the ax after all, but he feared they were still in danger. So did his girlfriend, Lee Moulton, a 50-year-old nurse, who noticed that many of her shipmates were pale and trembling. Within hours, they would be at risk of hypothermia.
Moulton was especially worried about Braden Hanna of Ontario, Canada, at 18 the Explorer's youngest passenger. Wanting to see Antarctica's icebergs firsthand and warn others about the effects of global warming, he had saved for years to pay for the cruise. "I was looking for adventure, and I got it," he told Moulton. "This is a pretty weird situation to be in without my mum and dad."
Hanna's thin trousers were soaked through. Wrapping her arms around the rangy teen, Moulton whispered, "Cuddle up to me. I'll keep you warm." The nurse noticed another man, who was sweating profusely, even in the frigid wind. "I was concerned for all of us," she says. "Our bodies were starting to chill down." Though a few people carried on muted conversations, most waited in silence.
Van Horne thought about her grandchildren while Paisola prayed quietly. "I was making every deal with God you can imagine," she says.
Shortly before dawn, a helicopter, believed to have been sent from a nearby military base, buzzed overhead. As the lifeboaters waved and shouted, Paisola turned to her aunt and said, "Finally somebody else on the planet knows that we're out here."
Andy White noticed that Bob Flood, an ornithologist who had led the group on shorebird-watching tours, looked pale and withdrawn. "Hang on, Bob," White told him. "By this time tomorrow, I'll be buying you a drink."
About two hours later, a passenger spotted a ship on the horizon. "It was a flicker of light the size of a pinhead," recalls Paisola. Slowly the speck became larger until everyone could make out the Nordnorge, a Norwegian cruise ship. It had braved numerous ice floes to reach the doomed Explorer in under five hours.
All 154 of the marooned travelers were transferred to the Nordnorge, where they were offered dry clothing by cruisers eager to help. When a woman handed Paisola a blanket, "I started to cry and couldn't stop," she says. She was joined by others who wept openly when the Nordnorge captain took them past the Explorer, tipped on its side like a dying whale.
"It broke my heart," says Van Horne. "There's something about Antarctica -- the whites, the blues, the grays, that barren landscape of ice and rock. It's a spiritual place. Knowing the ship was going down was hard to take."
Amazingly, most of the Explorer's passengers, from 14 different countries, came through no worse for wear. Two crew members suffered mild hypothermia, and a passenger twisted an ankle climbing onto the rescue craft. Transported to King George Island, two and a half hours from where their ship went down, the group spent a few nights at an Antarctic research center before they were airlifted to a military base in Chile to begin their individual journeys home.
An investigation into the disaster is under way, and representatives for G.A.P Adventures, owner of the Explorer, will not confirm reports that the company has offered to reimburse passengers $8,000 for the portion of the trip they didn't complete, along with $1,300 for the belongings they left behind. That doesn't come close to covering what Paisola lost to the sea, but, safely back in Utah, she prefers to focus on the positive. "The stars had to have been lined up perfectly for all of us to survive," she says.
She has joined two online newsgroups, set up by Andy White and Eli Charne, to stay in touch with fellow passengers. So far, some 60 others have logged on, posting photos, comments and messages of support.
Meanwhile, Paisola is ready to plan her next trip. Though she didn't make it to Antarctica's mainland to cross that seventh continent off her list, she's got other priorities. "From now on when I travel," she says, "I want to be warm."
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