Indents and Ice

This is going to be one of the shorter blogs I have put up due to the fact that the entire week has been taken up by Indenting. This is a form of torture that is illegal under the Geneva Convention but has to be done to allow for accurate ordering next year. Basically every department has to go through its stores and note down what they have and in what quantities. It seems to be that pretty much every department has been doing their indent this month except for Hazel who has until a little later to do hers. Paula, being the star that she is, has been working in the boat store for a couple of weeks tidying, counting and generally making our indent week much easier while I worked on the boats. 

We use a computer system called AMOS which tells us when to do maintenance and what spares we have in stock. The day of truth arrived on Monday and when we printed out the list we found that it was 35 pages of size 8 font, and very small line spacing! I will not describe to you what it was like other than the fact that I can tell you (and in fact feel impelled to tell you) that we have: 143 M6 flat washers; 488 M8 full nuts; 24 fuel filters and a partridge in a pear tree. We had to check every item against its AMOS number and then count the number that we had and make sure that it tallied up with how much AMOS thinks we should have. It should be fairly simple since whenever we use anything in maintenance we take it out of stock on AMOS so technically it should already be right but we found ourselves elbow deep in rope that hasn’t been used in years trying to estimate how many meters we had of 16ml, 3 braid nylon rope and how many of 16ml, 3 braid polypropene rope we have (and no I can’t tell the difference, nor can Paula).  We eventually finished it late Thursday afternoon and I then spent the entirety of Friday morning in putting it into the computer. I cannot tell you how pleased we are that it is done. 

On Friday afternoon we helped out with the kitchen indent and on Monday I will help Rod with the communication equipment indent and Hazel with the medical indent, both of which, I am sure, will be just as much fun as our own. 

The weather that was threatened reduced in magnitude but it was still very breezy and snowy. There was even pancake ice on the cove. Since it never actually got down to much below -5 all week this shows just how much freshwater runoff we have into the cove. The salt water is denser than the fresh and so sinks. The fresher water is therefore on the surface and can freeze in ‘warmer’ conditions than open sea water which is fully saline and therefore needs much colder conditions.

Pancake ice on the cove

 The three Rat project helicopters returned to Grytviken to seek shelter which meant that we had the company of a few extra people on base, alleviating somewhat our loss of the builders (not by much though, we all are still finding it odd that they are not here).

While winter did start its march on the base, the weather  improved towards the end of the week so Hazel, Daniel and I decided to go off on Friday evening and spend the night in the Sealers Cave in Maiviken. [I apologise now that I forgot my camera and therefore have no photos of this expedition]. This is a cave whose entrance was boarded up a good may years ago, probably by seal hunters, with a door to provide access. It is quite large and deep, with a platform next to the entrance which ensures everything is dry and gives a nice place for sleeping. 

Hazel carried my sleeping kit as well as her own and I carried ½ a rucksack full of wood. We left slightly later than planned but still made it to Maiviken hut just as it was getting dark. There we picked up thermorests for sleeping on and water (the stream near the cave is rather seally) and made our way through the darkening evening to the cave. It is a little higher than the beach so we had to negotiate our way through a bit of tussock, a slightly trickier prospect in the dark than during the day!

Once at the cave Daniel and I lit the fire while Hazel got on with the far more important job of cooking dinner. It was the most lovely evening, the sky was clear but it wasn’t very cold at all and from the cave mouth, through the flames, we could see stars and could tell that the moon was very bright by its light on the hill opposite across the bay. Wandering down to the beach we could see the moon itself and looking back towards the cave we could see the firelight flickering on the cave walls but couldn’t see the fire itself. Moments like these remind me of  the part in Jack London’s ‘Call of the Wild’ where Buck, the main character, a dog who slowly reverts to being a wolf,  looks into a fire and sees it with the eyes of a thousand generations of his ancestors to whom it calls through the ages. It really was a perfect evening and quite nice to have a night off base. 

The next morning Daniel had to head off early since he was on cook on Saturday (someone did his earlies for him) and he left Hazel and me to dawdle back. It was snowing so we changed our plan of exploring Boulder Pass to having a cup of tea in Maiviken Hut and then exploring around the lake near there. It wasn’t snowing too hard and when we turned at the top of Deadman’s Pass we could see the sun shining on West Cumberland Bay. 

This morning (Sunday) I was on earlies and had to do my prestart checks on the boat at the same time. Just as I was finishing the snow started to fall with intent and I was soon slightly damp. I took the Government Officers and Sue out to Antarctic Bay, the last Toothfish longliner to be inspected this season, through snow that was diffusing the low sunlight to cloak the hills in glory. It was wonderful. 

Hopefully next week will see some more of our lot going off on holiday, we all deserve a break and it will also soon see the end of indenting season. I hope never to have to do that again!