The final day of 2012 saw me taking apart the engine that stopped working on Dec 24th. I had to take the whole lower leg off and change the water pump. I was very proud of myself for having put it back together. Unfortunately, even though I spent half an hour trying to start it, nothing happened except for it backfiring so, since it was 1730 on New Year’s Eve, I left it till next year.
We had a nice, small celebration for New Year’s Eve. Everyone came round to ours as usual and we had a buffet which everyone pitched in to help with. After stuffing ourselves we all played a big game of celebrity salad bowl. It is a great game, although I haven’t played it in quite this way before. Everyone puts into a bowl 5 names. They could be celebrities, cartoon characters, people you know etc. You then split into two teams; the person holding the bowl has to describe to their team as many of the people as possible in 1 minute without saying their name, so for Churchill: “Prime Minister in WWII” could be way to do it. The bowl goes round with the teams taking it in turns to guess as many as possible till the bowl is empty. In the second round all the names go back in the bowl and you can only describe the person in 3 words so Churchill would be: “Prime Minister War”. The last round you can only mime so again for Churchill you would mime smoking a cigar and giving the V sign. There can be an extra round where you are only allowed a facial expression but that is ridiculously hard and can get very silly. At midnight we had champagne and everyone shuffled round the bar shaking hands or giving each other a hug and wishing each other a happy New Year. John, Joe, Derren, Gemma, Micky the builder and I wandered out to the back deck and shared a couple of cigars, chatting about the future and watching the mist rise up out of the kelp and disappear into the ice. A perfect way to start the New Year.
The next day, which should have been a holiday, we all had to work because we had the Pharos come in. In addition I was on earlies but I admit to putting my clothes on over my pyjamas and doing my rounds before heading back to bed for a couple more hours. The Pharos offloaded a large amount of containers for various projects. There were also a bunch of Norwegians here for a Reindeer project. We helped with cargo and bits and bobs and then in the evening the Norgies (as they’re called here) came up to the bar for a couple of beers. Most of us were pretty dead though, so slipped off to bed one by one.
The 2nd was also taken up with cargo and helping the Norgies prepare for their project. I managed to inadvertently cause a bit of a bio security scare. I had to move 3 205l drums of petrol to put on the Pharos and the pallet on which they stood was disintegrating so, by accident, I picked up a divot of sod which dropped when I put the pallet down by the ship. I didn’t notice but it was picked up by the GOs and put into the bio security shed to be investigated and checked over for invasive species, in case it had come in on the Pharos. It was only the next day that I heard about it and managed to allay their fears. The Pharos left to put the reindeer project into place at Husvik and we had to say goodbye to Alastair who left to go and work for the project.
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| Big berg off Hope Point |
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| Night Penguin |
The bio-security protocols that we have here are very strict. Every time someone gets on or off a ship they have to step in Virkon which is an everything-cide to make sure there are no plants, animals, bacteria, fungi or even viruses on our shoes when we come ashore. Every time anyone goes to one of the other peninsulas on the island the same thing happens to make sure that any invasives which we have on our peninsula (because of lax bio security in the past) don’t get spread to other areas. One of the big problems at the moment is Bittercress which Keiron is fighting hard to stay on top of. Unfortunately the battle has been lost against Dandelions and they are now a permanent feature on the peninsula. What makes it so difficult to keep plants under control is not only human movement but also the seals and, mainly, ducks, who wander through an area of invasive plants and then spread it into virgin territory. Every time we have fresh food come in it needs to be checked. The food we offloaded during relief we didn’t have to check (thank god) because it was packed in a known bio-secure area back in the UK Falklands or back home for IDing.
The rest of the week was taken up by me attempting to fix the damned engine, this time with Erny’s help. We took it apart again and once we had put it back together it worked. However, we had water coming out of a very odd place which was not right so after some testing we took it all apart again. Unfortunately we have just had to take more and more off so now the only thing still attached to the boat is the powerhead (if any of the jargon that I am spouting confuses you, just imagine how I feel having to take it apart and figure out why it isn’t working! This is stumping our mechanic who has 30 years of experience so you can picture what it is doing to my brain.). Fortunately we have had sunshine for most of this week because my boatshed has been taken over by the builders painting windows so we have been working outside.
When I wasn’t elbow deep in engines we had a very exciting addition to the museum. The son of Reginald James (who was on Shackleton’s Endurance expedition) donated Frank Worsley’s nautical almanac back to the museum. Frank Worsley was the captain of the Endurance and it was only by his incredibly skilful navigation that they made it in their small open boat from Elephant Island to South Georgia . He was only able to take a reading with his sextant twice and both times the boat was pitching so badly that he had to be held up by the others and he wasn’t sure he had managed to see the horizon correctly. Using the very sketchy readings that he had managed to take, and this almanac, he was able to navigate to South Georgia when failure, which would have been all too easy, would have meant a slow, lingering death for all of them in the South Atlantic . An almanac has all the details of tides, sunrise and sunset, star movements and times, etc for each day of the year to allow sailors to navigate. By law every ship still has to carry one and every maritime officer has to be able to navigate using it in case the electronic systems break down. In Worsley’s day it was the only way to navigate. He describes in his book “Shackleton’s Boat Journey” how he had managed to keep the almanac dry up to their setting out in the boat but that after a couple of days the pages started disintegrating and it was a race as to whether they would reach South Georgia or whether the book would disintegrate first. Luckily the James Caird (their small boat) won. The almanac definitely looks as if it has had a hard life and is in very delicate condition. Thomas (the curatorial intern) was extremely twitchy when opening the packet and looked quite funny in a museum fleece and white cotton gloves but he did a grand job and it will be the main feature in the museum from now on.
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| Frank Worsley's almanac |
Other than that, the highlight of my week (my year so far) was Saturday. After a very lazy morning luxuriating in the joy of reading in bed I was eating breakfast when the call came from Daniel over at Maiviken that the second seal they had tagged had come back and he needed help to catch her. Rod and I raced over there. Literally raced, we only stopped once for Rod to retie his boot and Deadman’s Pass was very nearly Deadwoman’s Pass, I must be getting increasingly hill fit though because I wouldn’t have been able to do that a couple of months ago. However, I am feeling the effects today.
This female was far less eager to be caught than the first one and she took us on a chase around
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| Maiviken Blondie |
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| Bathing Beauties |
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