Gifts In Kind

As I mentioned last week, I spent all of Monday ferrying sailors from HMS Edinburgh to shore and back again, so they could spend a couple of hours on South Georgia. It was a very interesting experience. We started at 0800 by taking Pat (GO) out to clear them and then at 0900 Alastair (the ex seal guy) and I in our respective harbour launches and with our respective crews started the process of ferrying them 8 at a time. We are only allowed to have 10 people on board while ferrying in the cove which constricted us a little but in the end was fine. We swapped crews every couple of hours or so but Ali and I stayed as the coxes all day. As well as us ferrying the sailors ashore there was a lot of other activity. The government had been lent the use of their Lynx helicopter to take aerial shots of the site of the accident at Stromness that we went to last week. Once that was done they also very kindly ferried 300kg of kit up Brown Mountain so that a couple of German scientists can come in and install a very precise GPS transceiver site. We were all very pleased about this since it meant that we weren’t going to be asked to help carry it up there.

HMS Edinburgh is the last of the Type 42 destroyers around and this is her last voyage. It has been, and will be, one hell of a voyage. She came down the east coast of Africa to Cape Town. From there she came here to South Georgia. Once she finished here she was on her way to the Falklands for Christmas. There she will stay for a month on patrol around the islands, helping outlying communities, conducting a fisheries patrol and generally being a ‘presence’ in the area. Once she has finished that she will make her slow way home through the Caribbean and up to New York where she will sail right into Manhatten (how cool is that, it is one of the things I really want to do). From New York she will sail home and after leave and a few final ceremonial duties (including the ship’s company marching through Edinburgh) she will be decommissioned in June. A fine final voyage for a fine ship. [To reassure anyone who thinks I may be giving away sensitive operational information: I am not, her itinerary can be found in the public domain].



HMS Edinburgh

Of course being on the water all day I was privy to all her radio comms. Her code name was ‘Fortress’ (her insignia is Edinburgh castle), her small seaboat was ‘Red Knight’, her Lynx helicopter was ‘Claymore’ and the airman who went up Brown Mountain with Rod and John to ensure that she was unloaded correctly at the top of the mountain was ‘Hobbit’ (apparently he was rather tall).

To come alongside a ship can be quite an interesting manoeuvre; we were incredibly lucky that it was neither too windy nor choppy. The weather in the morning was horrible, we found ourselves operating at completely reduced visibility in a snow storm for a couple of hours but it slowly cleared to bright sunshine in the evening. We were also lucky in that they had a fixed ladder on their Port quarter (at the rear on the left) which meant that we had a fixed object to hold against rather than a rope pilot ladder which is our usual point of contact. Once alongside you have to hold there for a good time (it always seemed much longer than it actually was) while 8 people got on or off and bags and lifejackets were passed back and forth. This sometimes went fine but sometimes our launches would inch away with us fighting them all the time and you would have to call ‘wait’ and some poor sailor would have to wait holding onto the ladder while we came back underneath them. The ladder wasn’t high at all luckily so it was fine for them to wait. Once they were all on you had to come away without bumping or scraping and head into the cove to drop them off at the wharf where again we were holding off without ropes. It was both mentally and physically exhausting but both Alastair and I had a real sense of achievement of a job well done by the end of it.

The biggest gifts (other than not having to hump 300kg of kit up a hill) that Edinburgh gave us were a copy of the film RED (we had been watching it on Sunday night when it stopped 10 mins from the end so we were very pleased to hear they had a copy) and 15 whole chickens. Now this doesn’t sound much but no base in Antarctica brings in meat on the bone. A study was done and it was found that badly disposed of bones could possibly give avian diseases to any nearby penguin colonies so the importing of meat on the bone was stopped as a precaution. However a whole roast chicken does taste so much better. Therefore when it was hinted to them that Christmas wasn’t the same without a whole roast bird, they very kindly produced 15 whole chickens which are currently sitting in our freezer waiting for the big day. (And don't worry, the bones will be disposed of very responsibly.)

The final job we did for them was in the evening after we had shut down and were just sitting down to a well earned drink. We got a radio call that they had a ‘small issue’; they were having a BBQ on the flight deck and had dropped a fuel canister overboard by accident and couldn’t collect it themselves since their seaboat had just broken. Sue, Pat and I headed out and collected it for them and in return were given the most delicious kudu (a kind of South African antelope) burgers which we ate in the sun while dawdling back to base. It was a great end to a good day.

The next day we spent the evening ‘decking the halls’ (or just the bar) with Christmas decorations. We have a few Scrooges on base (at least they like to think of themselves as Scrooges) but once Sue and I had got stuck in with the decorations and some mince pies and mulled wine found their way onto the bar it was funny how many of the Scrooges got stuck in and a lot of fun was had all round. In order to ‘deck’ the cove for Christmas Nature has blown in a HUGE iceberg which grounded on Wednesday and is now beginning very slowly to crumble. It is very impressive and providing a nice background to our daily lives.



Iceberg



The rest of the week for me was spent in the depths of Pipit’s (one of the two harbour launches) engine bay doing all the services listed on AMOS. I was on Earlies on Wednesday and was meant to start cooking at around 1730 but at 1700 I found myself still standing in the engine bay with two engines U/S (unserviceable because they had no filters in them and me up to my elbows in oil cursing. I very nearly had a sense of humour failure then the Ellie seal that had been asleep next to the boats all day woke up with a snort and a very surprised look on his face as I passed him with a bucket of oil and I realised how ridiculous it all was and then wasted yet more time by giggling to myself so hard that I had to sit down. 

Poor Daniel managed to really damage his ankle while seal tagging and has been hobbling everywhere for a couple of days. This meant that someone had to do his seal round on Saturday; during the summer he has to go to Maiviken every other day and take photos of the beaches to count the numbers of male, female and pup Furries, then collect 10 scat every week and sift through it to see what they are eating. Rod, Andy Black and I went over and did his seal round for him.



Crowded beach



  Andy also put a listening device next to a couple of White Chinned Petrel nests to get a base line of numbers to use when ascertaining relative population increase after the rat eradication project. It was very interesting to see what he does and it was a lovely day out. My favourite part of the day was sitting above one beach and seeing a female Furry come out of the water. As soon as her head broke the surface she was calling and calling. This calling became slightly frantic after a while and I began to get worried (not as worried as the mother) until her head snapped to the right and she stood very still, obviously straining to hear something. Out of the Tussock came flapping a small pup with its oh so very overlarge flippers and the joy of the reunion was so touching that it brought a tear to my eye. How on earth they could recognise each other’s calls amongst the cacophony on the beach I will never understand but I was very glad that they did. On our return we stopped for a very short time by the Gentoo colony and found that the chicks are getting big and are beginning to crèche. They now look just like furry Pterodactyls.



Gentoo creche



Next week will be a quiet one we hope. There will be a church service for us and a cruise ship tomorrow evening after I have collected Katie and Alastair from the Barff peninsula where they have been having a holiday of 4 days. On Christmas Day itself Sue has taken on the job of Chief Chef in charge of several Kitchen Slaves. We will hopefully have 22 people for Christmas supper and we will be enjoying Chicken on the bone and the two Christmas puddings that my wonderful mother put in my P box that left England at the beginning of October! The only thing lacking will be the joy of Christmas with the family and I will be thinking of them all day, however it will be a cracking Christmas here and I hope that you all enjoy yourselves as much as we intend to.

Merry Christmas!!