The loud speaker "ding donged" into life. This is the captain speaking "Abandon Ship! Abandon Ship! Abandon Ship!" Chilling to the bone announcement, but luckily this was only our (very serious) lifeboat drill exercise where we had to go to our cabins, put on our warmest clothes, don our life jackets found under our beds and present ourselves in our allocated station for boarding our life boat. Good procedure to know! Around three years ago a similar boat sank ...

Overnight we had travelled quite a distance and now the sea was littered with stunning icebergs, some stationary and others bopping around in the crystal clear water. We also awoke to brilliant sunshine which made everything look so perfect. The snow became a more vivid white and the ice a more vivid blue and water was still enough to reflect back perfect mirror images of icebergs and snow clad mountains. We had been briefed that there was a rather strenuous clim...