INTO THE GREAT BEYOND
Capt. Jason Halvorsen was down below, eating lunch. He and his crew had just spent the better part of a day drifting in view of Chile’s Jorge Montt Glacier, which has a tendency to calve off icebergs. “The first time that it cracked, we all thought it was thunder,” he says. “The whole boat shook. And then sections would fall offof it”
Halvorsen’s crew was still in the tender watching Mother Nature’s show, except for the first mate, who was at the mothership’s helm.
“All of the sudden, I heard profanities coming over our crew radios,” Halvorsen says. “He put the boat in hard reverse. I ran up just in time to see this glacier that’s half a mile wide with the entire face of it collapsing. It hits the water, and you think, Oh my God, there’s going to be a tidal wave.”
Halvorsen raced aft just in time to see the water around the boat—already choked with chunks of ice—deaden the splash.
