My Midwinter Week

As I write this we have passed midwinter and slowly, incrementally, as the northern hemisphere starts its gradual descent into winter, we in the Southern Polar regions begin our rise into the sun. Midwinter is the most important celebration in the Antarctic. It is the time when finally the nights will start to get shorter and for those on the continent it marks the time when they can start the countdown to seeing the sun again. Here on South Georgia we never lost daylight. The days have been short and we have had no direct sunlight on the base for a month or so but we have never had to experience what our colleagues at Halley station are going through. They are currently in continual darkness with temperatures of -40’C and winds of up to 50kts whirling the snow around their base. 

Across Antarctica all but the most necessary of work stopped and we have all had a week of relaxation. We have had Midwinter greetings from most of the bases on the continent: the French, Norwegians, Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, Argentineans, Chileans, Brazilians, Americans, New Zealanders, Australians, the other British bases and many more all sent photos to every other base and we sent ours back. We got a Midwinter message from David Cameron and Barak Obama. It made me feel much closer to the Antarctic community than I have ever felt before and made it seem as if we were part of a family. 

Our Midwinter message to all the other bases

 As part of the Midwinter celebrations the British Bases all have a ‘pubcrawl’ at some point over the week. We did ours on Monday night. Everybody who wants to sets up a bar with a theme and then we all traipse over the base visiting them. We started with the Docs Bar up in the surgery, which I had spent some of the afternoon helping Hazel to decorate. She made ‘Death in the Afternoon’ a cocktail created by Hemingway which is a mixture of absinthe and champagne. It was a very civilised way to start the evening. We then moved on to the Techies Bar in the welding bay. The drink here was homebrew that Joe has been making for a while. It isn’t bad at all. From there we made our way up to the Base Commander’s office which Rod had filled with balloons for a very fun bar. Then it was the ‘Boaties Bar’; Paula and I  made them all dress up in oil skins and gave them ‘Salty Seadogs’, a mixture of vodka and grapefruit juice with a rim of salt. The challenge of having to tie themselves to each other using only one hand to tie a bowlin went down well and then we moved on to Shack Villa for the GO’s bar. This was a Vicars Tea Party with Pimms and scones and Jo dressed as the vicar and Keiron dressed as the vicar’s wife. The last bar of the night was the Beakers (scientists) Bar in the sauna, a beach theme. It all went off very well and everyone had a very enjoyable night.

When I said that only the most necessary of work went on during the week, unfortunately taking the GOs to inspect krill boats was necessary. We had three boats to inspect but it went well and I even managed to get some training in for Rod and Hazel coming alongside the ship. The only bore was it taking an hour to dig the boats out so that we could use them. There must have been about 3 feet of snow on them which is a lot when you have to dig it out carefully so you don’t damage anything. The snow was also falling off the roof in front of the doors of the boat shed, meaning that we had to dig out the doors. I, for one, started running in and out of the door as fast as possible; I did not want to have a pile of that snow fall on my head. 

A lot of snow on the boats

Boatshed doors dug out

 Unfortunately it snowed most of the week which meant that the track round to Grytviken was closed. This meant we couldn’t leave base. The restrictions actually made me feel rather closer to the explorers of Scott or Shackleton’s time, when they couldn’t leave their bases and were stuck inside most of the time preparing for the travel of the summer. The effort that went into their Midwinter dinners just goes to show how important it was. They kept certain things back for the celebration and made a real effort. There was one famous trip done in the depths of winter: Dr Bill Wilson, Apsley Cherry-Gerrad and ‘Birdie’ Bowers went in search of an Emperor Penguin colony to attempt to collect eggs for the scientists in the Natural History Museum back at home. If you want a tale of unimaginable suffering and courage then read ‘The Worst Journey In The World’ by Apsley Cherry-Gerrard. I guarantee it will freeze your blood no matter where you read it. 

 In corners of the dry food store, the cold food store and the freezers have been little boxes with the words “For Midwinter” scrawled across them. They held little goodies or things we were running out of, like marmalade, so that we could have a treat over midwinter. Bringing them out and finding myself happy at remembering that we had olives or tinned pineapple again made me feel a kindred spirit to the explorers of Shackleton’s day and made it even more special. 

Midwinters day dawned and I woke up to clear a path from the sauna to the sea for later activities. We had the BC’s breakfast (a combined effort from Rod and Paula) at 1000 which was the works, everything you could possibly want in a cooked breakfast. Then once we had semi digested that, at 1130 we steeled ourselves and all went for a Midwinter swim. The air temperature was about -2’C but the water was a balmy 4’C so in we all jumped. I can’t say that we stayed in very long and soon we were all ensconced in the sauna getting feeling back into our toes. It was very refreshing though.

At 1400 we had the Mid Winter Present (MWP) giving. We had all taken names out of a hat in April and had to make a present for that person. I got Jo Cox the GO. She is also a Master is the Merchant Navy and has her own boat so I decided to make her a set of navigational dividers, a stand for pencils and slide rules for her chart table and a box to put the dividers in. Daniel  made me a box very cleverly fashioned to look like a Jet boat. Jo made Joe a backgammon set inlaid with a picture of South Georgia. Joe made Sue a clock and a book stand for her recipe books. Sue made Rod a box with a lid inlaid with an engraved picture of Grytviken. Rod made Keiron a picture frame with one of his fantastic photos of Adelie penguins in it. Keiron made a table out of wood from Discovery House for Erny and Erny made a milking stool for Daniel. Paula had knitted a hat, glove and scarf set for Hazel and made earrings out of reindeer bone and a knife with reindeer bone handle. Hazel had made Paula a set of 4 light boxes with x rays inside them. I had helped her make them and it was very intricate. Everything was wonderful and very well thought out for each person. It really was amazing since none of us have experience in this type of thing. I think I may have got the creating bug though and I might find myself in the carpenter’s workshop (Chippy Shop) a lot more now. 

All the Midwinter Presents

My present from Daniel

 

My present to Jo Cox

The Midwinter Dinner was a huge affair and everyone pitched in to make it a fantastic evening. The dining room and table were decorated, we all got dressed in our formal wear and the food that was produced was unbelievable. We had a starter of king prawn and scallop on black pudding with bacon and a balsamic dressing. Then we had a palate cleanser of gin and tonic sorbet. This was followed by a main course of roast goose (provided by the builders from the Falklands) and all the trimmings. The pudding was white chocolate ice cream and then a cheese board and port with chocolate truffles. All in all it was a huge success. 

Scott's Midwinter Dinner

 

Our Midwinter Dinner

 I don’t know if this will have been only the first of many Antarctic Midwinters for me (I have a feeling it might not be my last) but it is certainly one that I will always remember.