On a good day with fair weather, the S.A. Agulhas II can travel close to 400 nautical miles (about 460 land miles) at an average speed of 16 knots (roughly 18 miles per hour). That is pretty fast for a ship this size. This ship operates 24 hours, seven days a week, so we will keep moving forward at this pace until we reach the icepack of the Weddell Sea in a few days.
I drove about ten miles from my house to O’Hare airport in Chicago, flew 719 miles from Chicago to Newark, New Jersey, flew another 7,817 miles from Newark to Cape Town, South Africa, and traveled roughly ten miles from the airport to Cape Town harbor. Since leaving Cape Town harbor, we have averaged 400-450 miles across the South Atlantic per day. The total journey from Cape Town to the Endurance sink site is about 3,272 nautical miles, or 3,700 miles. So, give or take a few miles, I’ll have traveled over 12,200 miles by land, air and sea by the time we reach our ultimate destination! I’ll go back the same way I came on the return journey.
