This too shall pass . . .

This week has not been the best of my experiences of South Georgia. I am not going to go into details but let us just say that the politics of a small, isolated base with bad communications to the outside world and a grand sweep of characters and points of view can lead (rarely) to some unpleasantness. Luckily with the help of good friends and a lot (at least on my part) of vigorous exercise things have returned to a more normal atmosphere and are pottering on as normal.

The only thing that is not normal is that Paula is packing to leave. She was the first of the 8 month boating officers. She arrived in January and this means that she leaves next Sunday. I am not entirely sure how the boatshed is going to function without her but we will have to bumble on. The main thing that this means is that I will be the only jetboat cox on base for a while. That is fine but will limit my going on holiday to weeks when we know that there are no boats in the vicinity and that therefore no boating will be necessary. It also means that the only back up available currently is provided by the RIBs since nearly everyone is a RIB cox. This state of affairs is not ideal so I will be working hard in the next few weeks to get as many people up to speed on the jetboats as possible. I hope to have a couple of back up coxes trained within a couple of weeks or I am not going to be able to get off base and that would be a real pity.

One of the special things to happen this week was the discovery of the temporary residence of a Leopard seal. We do occasionally have them in the area but it is rare for one to stay in the cove for so long. Rod and I discovered him on an ice floe just next to the jetty at Grytviken while over there training. He was completely unconcerned by our presence in a nasty, smelly, noisy jetboat and we were able to continue our training without disturbing him. The next day Hazel and I were over there again training and there he was again on his floe just watching us.

He is quite small and must be a young one and is a beautiful light grey with darker grey mottling. His (we know he is male because Daniel checked) fur looks incredibly soft and strokeable and if it weren’t for the slightly reptilian head and the absolutely enormous jaws he presented every time he yawned (which was quite frequently) he would have looked incredibly sweet. Actually the fact that he looked directly in one’s eyes, and one could tell that he knew he was at the top of any food chain, did slightly reduce the sweet factor. He looked as if he wouldn’t mind one going up to stroke him and tickle his belly. Actually I get the feeling that he would be so shocked that anything dared to touch him that he wouldn’t do anything, but there is nothing on this earth that would induce me to go anywhere near lunging distance of those teeth.

Our Lep

Lep face

 He was still around today (Sunday), actually he was on land rather than on his floe and he looked like he was just lounging around chilling and relaxing. Unfortunately by the time that Jo, Hazel and I came back past his resting point he had returned to the water and there was no sign of him. Daniel went out to collect his scat to see if there was anything interesting in it. From the cursory glance that I gave it while passing I could see fur and penguin feathers so we can guess what he has been eating.

Other events this week have been a quiz run by Sue and a darts match between Halley base and us. This was set up by Joe. In the past bases used to play darts between each other using the HF radio. In this day and age we were hoping that we would be able to use a webcam but the internet being what it is we had to resort to bantering over the phone. Luckily calls between any BAS numbers are free and we were able to spend a very nice hour or so speaking to them and playing darts and just generally chatting. Most of us know most of them from the conference we were all at last year in Cambridge, so it was good to do a bit of catching up. As Joe said, it is always nice for things like that to happen between bases, especially Halley and Bird Island since they are the most isolated and appreciate hearing new voices the most. Unfortunately, after a strong start (winning the first of 3 matches), we eventually lost and will be sending a crate of beer to them on the next resupply in November/December time.

The one other event this week was Nik teaching us how to dance. Nik is the scientist who arrived last week to work on the genetics of fish larvae. He is half Swedish, half Haitian and was born in Spain so dancing is in his blood. We had a delicious and unusually causal Saturday night dinner of pizza and then we cleared the bar of chairs and tables and started to follow his lead. I am NOT a good dancer. I have a sense of rhythm but I can’t seem to communicate that to my feet. For the first ten minutes when we were practising the basic steps I kept falling over my feet and getting it wrong. After a while however I managed to get it and actually it wasn’t as bad as I had thought it might be. It is amazing how much difference a good partner makes. We all swapped partners all night and dancing the same steps with him was a completely different experience to dancing with one of the British guys. It was a good night and I think that it might become a regular thing.  

The weather yesterday was incredibly unpleasant so Hazel, Jo and I decided to wait until today (Sunday) to go out for a ski. Well they skied and I wandered along beside them on snowshoes. While it made me feel rather unfit when they slid off leaving me puffing, on balance I wasn’t too much slower than them (although I don’t know how much pity they were taking on me) and it was a very pleasant couple of hours.

Hazel NOT skiing into me

 Just as we were returning we heard on the radio that a fishing vessel was coming in with a crewman in “extreme pain”. Not what anyone wants to hear. I took Hazel and Jo out to her this evening and luckily it wasn’t as bad as it could be. It was getting dark as I went out to collect them and there was slightly more swell than I would have liked for night ops but Rod, Erny and I were the dream team and everyone is back on base safe and sound and the vessel is heading back out to the fishing grounds.

It is events like this that remind one what a different position the KEP doc is in compared to the other bases. At the other bases the doc is there predominantly for the BAS personnel and will rarely deal with someone outside of that environment since they are normally more isolated than us. At KEP the doc is here for us of course but also to provide emergency medical cover for the fishing vessels. Fishing is one of the most dangerous occupations in the world and for them to know that there is medical help closer to the fishing grounds than the Falkland Islands does make a difference to how safe the crews feel.

It is time for me to go and find a book to read for half an hour or so before Hazel and I have our traditional Sunday dinner of pasta. My next blog might be a little unpunctual. Next weekend is the Antarctic 48 hour film festival. I will explain more in my next blog but we will all be a little busy all weekend. And this week looks pretty busy with fishing boats, taking Nik’s traps out, and training, so it should be a good one.

A Week of Fishing Vessels

At the end of the last blog I mentioned that we were in the midst of ‘Race Antarctica’. As we thought, we were not able to put in as many hours and miles as we had hoped due to injury and a heavy workload. We did manage to get below 1000km by yesterday (Sunday 21^st) which was a boost but then that boost was shattered when we heard that Bird Island (a base with only 4 winterers) had won. They were in 3^rd place on Wednesday, trailing behind a determined Halley and Rothera, so they must have put in some phenomenal distances over the days since because they won yesterday. An amazing achievement for them all.

We have decided to continue and in fact to double the distance to what it should be. The organisers had decided that they would take the distances from Bird Island to KEP (my base (King Edward Point)) to Rothera and then to Halley and then halve that distance. We have decided that actually we want to complete the whole thing which is very good. It has got a bunch of us back into doing exercise and it is quite fun to try and beat your own distances. I think I may get saddle sores from Hazel’s bike though.

Talking about saddle sores: I want to use this opportunity to promote a very good cause. My Aunt Isabella has decided to do the ‘Purer 3 peaks’ to raise money for a charity that supports sufferers of breast cancer. Normally the challenge is to climb the three highest peaks in the UK: Ben Nevis, Snowdon and Scaffell Pike in 24 hours, driving between them, but my aunt will be cycling between them. It will be an amazing challenge and I for one am in awe of her. Her justgiving site is http://justgiving.com/isabella-3peaks in case you are interested in finding out more.

Last week has been full to the brim with fishing vessels. I was taking GOs out to vessels transhipping (transferring fish or fuel from one to another), or needing licensing, every single day except for Tuesday. It was great to be out doing the boating that I love but there was one small incident. Pat (the GO who has just returned) had just got onto the pilot ladder so I dropped back to ensure that I wasn’t underneath him in case he fell. All was fine until Rod (who was my crew on Friday) and I smelt something extremely unpleasant. I looked around to see yellowy/browny/lumpy water flowing from the ship all over Prion’s deck.  I had inadvertently manoeuvred myself under the sewage pipe just as they were emptying their tanks. It was an awful smell and took me quite a while to clean the bilges out I can tell you. Apart from that, just being on the water was wonderful. With the ice forming on the cove you can see water ‘wrinkle’ as the boat moves previously invisible ice on the surface of the sea. It is almost hypnotic to watch.

We have a new chap on base, Nik from Bangor University, who is working on determining the genetic effects of temperature increase on fish larvae. This will allow him to determine the possible change in patterns of movement by larval fish and therefore ecosystem change due to climate change. First he has to catch the larvae. He has two designs of traps and is busy building them in the workshop. He will have finished one type by tomorrow and then we can work out how to deploy them to the greatest advantage.

On Sunday the weather was perfect and the snow conditions were just right so pretty much everyone went out. Joe (sparky) climbed the hill more times than I would have to snowboard back down and Rod, Hazel, Jo, Nik and I all went for a little trip to Maiviken. My knee still isn’t quite right from our trip to St Andrew’s so I forwent the skis and took snowshoes. Although I obviously couldn’t keep up with them on the downhill, uphill I wasn’t much slower than them (well not ridiculously) and so we had a nice little outing. At the top of Deadman’s the ‘cripples’ Jo (bad legs), Rod (bad shin) and I (bad knee) turned back and had lunch at the top of the pass while Hazel and Nik went on to Maiviken. It was a lovely lunch and then an enjoyable and leisurely stroll home.

So not much happened last week but it was an enjoyable one all the same. I will try to be more prompt with the next blog but till then have a good week.

 



Jo's slightly unorthodox skiing method



The view from Deadman's

My early morning companion

Paint, dust and yet more paint

Before I begin I just want to say “Happy Bastille Day”, as I am writing this on the 14^th, and I am half French! 

I left you last week with Pipit’s starboard engine, still in pieces, scattered carefully all over the boatshed and the prospect of a week of grinding and chipping old paint and repainting new paint on.  

The reason we had to repaint Pipit is that the nonslip surface underfoot was becoming worn and slippery which is not good when one has to contend with ice and snow. We had to put a new surface on to make sure that we are safe when working on the decks. Now my predecessor, Matt Kenney, had spent many hours trawling through the many many nonslip options and with the help of one of our GOs,  Jo Cox, had come up with the option of ‘Kiwigrip’. This is actually pretty good stuff. One of the options is to make up a normal topcoat with a nonslip additive which you then paint on. In addition the jetboats are aluminium so most paints require an etch primer which you have to paint on first and then put several coats on etc etc. However this stuff is impressive. It goes onto anything from aluminium to wood to old paint as long as the old paint is secure enough. This meant that we didn’t have to etch prime it or even prime it which cut down dramatically on time which was very lucky. It is a very very thick paint and you dollop it on so it is about 4-5mm thick. Then once it is on you roller it with a special roller which stipples the paint, creating peaks. If you want it to be very nonslip  you wait till the paint is tacky and then roller it again. It is a very elegant and clever way of doing things and I think it will work well.  

In order not to get in the way of Paula and Erny and so as to not annoy them I worked on chipping the paint whenever they weren’t in the engine bay. This meant a fair few rushed lunches and latish nights. They were actually much quicker than they thought they would be and were finished by Wednesday afternoon. This was a massive boon. On Thursday Hazel and I got down to some hard work. Poor Hazel, she had volunteered to help paint since she enjoys painting things but I managed to cajole her into helping to chip as well. We chipped off what paint we could with scrapers. We started out with normal length scrapers with sharp edges and finished with short scrapers with rounded edges as that nonslip stuff is pretty tough to get off. What we couldn’t chip off we ground off with wire brushes on angle grinders. You only have to look at the photo to see how tough the paint was on the equipment. Once we had that off (and that in itself pretty much took two days) we could wash and clean the surfaces and prepare them.  

Masking tape is a wonderful thing but when you have to put it around smallish circular bits it can be very annoying. We taped every edge and made sure everything was as clean as it could be. We started painting on Thursday night. We finished on Thursday at midnight and stumbled back up to Everson House. Stumbling was the operative word since there had been a good deal of rain and sleet and then it froze so the entire base was an ice rink for most of the week. Even with studded grips on I spent most of my time outside skidding from one snowy or bare patch to the next.

We started again the next day bright and early and continued to chip away at the bow and then paint that. We had to be very, very careful not to walk on our new paint since the peaks were not quite firm yet.   

Saturday was spent doing the last few bits, touching up and making sure that everything was neat, tidy and shipshape. We have been hearing that the summer at home is searing hot and that everyone is having BBQs all over the country. We got jealous so we decided that Saturday night we would have a bonfire and a BBQ. OK so a BBQ in 2’C is a little different to 22’C but it was just as nice even if the dress code was  padded orange boiler suits and made us look as if we were all inmates from a federal prison, and it was lovely to return to the bonfire for a beer once Hazel and I had gone and put the last coat of paint on the bow.  

 

Bonfire

 

Sunday was the moment of truth. Would the engine start? Had they put everything back together properly? Being Paula and Erny of course they had. They have done a couple of small tests and need to test things tomorrow morning but they are optimistic so here’s hoping that next week I can have some positive engine news. Whether she works or not she looks very smart and tidy and the decks are now much safer than they were.  

 

Angle grinding

 

A lot of wire brushes . . .

 

Hazel angle grinding

 

Nearly done . . .

 

Wire brush: right new, left used

 

The other thing that has been going on this week is ‘Race Antarctica’. Normally this is organised by BAS HQ at Cambridge and the bases have to make teams and race for the equivalent distance of crossing Antarctica but this year things have been made a little smaller. The Doc at Halley is in charge and we are doing half the distance between all the British bases. However that is still 1996km which is a fair old way. Different activities have different weighting. If you walk or cycle then it is 1:1. Ski (cross country, not downhill), crosstrainer and running is 1:1.5 and Rowing is 1:2. So if you row 7km then you can put 14km towards the race etc. Each day the people with the 4 greatest distances make up the base team and the data is being sent back to the Doc at Halley to keep track. Luckily Hazel has a turbotrainer on her bike so we have been putting some goodish distances on that. 

We are at a slight disadvantage at this base compared to the others because the winter season is actually our busiest with ships coming in etc so we are not able to put in as many hours as we would like but we have still managed a good start and with a less hectic week next week we should hopefully be able to get into a routine and start ticking the miles off. I think I might go see if the bicycle is free to get some miles on before dinner. Hopefully this event should have us all fitter and healthier which is only a good thing. 

 

Only 1635.9km to go. . .

Fog, Snow and Holidays

“Right a bit, good line” Crunch, crunch, crunch, “Left a bit now, good line”. There is a joke that runs around base that whenever Hazel and I go on holiday the weather will inevitably crap out. We have always laughed it off but now we have had to come to the unfortunate realisation that it is true.

I was not able to write my blog last week due to rather a frantic weekend. We discovered in Midwinter week that the oil leak that we had hoped had stopped in Pipit has not. Erny, Paula and I took all of the week before last to investigate and try and figure out what was going on. Actually that should be changed to: Erny spent all week investigating and Paula and I tried to help/not get in the way. In the end it turned out that Paula could help while I mainly just got in the way so I did what I could and then continued to do all the other routine jobs while they worked on the engine (you can’t physically get three people in the engine bay so I really would just have been in the way). Erny had figured out that we needed to change the head cylinder gasket which is a big job and much better done inside. We had the last of the tide on Saturday with which to get her out and it was touch and go with only one engine but in the end we did it and Pipit has been in the boat shed all week. She also needs a new coat of nonslip paint, the current one is no longer non slip. So while Erny read up on the engine Hazel and I spent most of Saturday and Sunday chipping and grinding off what paint we could. This caused clouds of red dust to settle everywhere. It was quite remarkable where it got to. At the same time we had to pack for our holiday to St Andrew’s Bay. Once Paula has left (next month, far too soon) I won’t be able to get as far as St Andrew’s and since I was literally in the way she and Hazel both said it was time to go. When we decided to go it was forecast bright sunshine and beautiful weather and Jo, Hazel and I had just been for a glorious day out to Maiviken. We should have known that the instant we decided to go the weather would turn bad.

After an early start on Monday and many problems with RIB engines not wanting to start (a perennial problem and one that I am trying to fix) we finally made it to Sorling Beach with heavy packs and light hearts. We started walking in sunshine with crisp snow under our snowshoes but by the time we had reached the lake a quarter of the way into our journey the fog had descended and we had to work by GPS and compass.

The dreaded fog

Now I have described our maps before but I will take the time to do it again. In the UK, where the maps are excellent and there are features on them like rivulets and large rocks, navigating in fog can be boring but is very possible. In South Georgia the contours are at 50m. This means that a cliff 49.9m high can be in your way and you would never know. The maps are also very feature poor. There can be one large river on the map but when you look up from the map there are actually three running past your feet and there is no way of knowing which one is the one on the map. Normally, in the UK both Hazel and I would have navigated happily by map and compass but here we simply couldn’t. We descended into Hound Bay which was out of the fog and had a chilly lunch there contemplating the next three hours of travel uphill. We continued on until we literally could not see 5m ahead of our footsteps. At the foot of Mount Skittle we cached our tent so we wouldn’t have to haul it back up the hill when we returned.

So now we are back at the beginning of this blog, with me holding the GPS very firmly in one hand and guiding Hazel back onto the track, while stumbling in the bad visibility behind her. Through teamwork we finally got to the hut and I think I have rarely been  so pleased to see a small damp hut as I was to see that one. We had a meal of ‘rat packs’ (dehydrated ration packs) and large mugfuls of hot tea and cheerfully got into our warm and cosy bunks for the night. The bunks at St Andrews are HUGE. They are bigger than our Pitroom bunks back at the base, and rather comfortable.

The next day saw us rising not very early and tidying up the hut from the night before when we had arrived and literally just dumped everything in our hurry to eat and sleep. We tried to patch the waders that were in the hut so we could cross the rivers to get to the colony. It was still foggy and fairly chilly but even if the fog hadn’t lifted enough for us to see the yellow snow patches under the penguins,  half a million penguins do make a fair amount of noise and smell so we literally just followed our noses until we arrived in the middle of thousands upon thousands of the little fellows. The adults were sleek and beautiful, looking at us in a rather haughty manner as if to say “More paparazzi? Well if you must, but please get my good side this time. ” The chicks were just huge balls of fuzzy brown. They were looking a little damp round the edges because of the fog and had their tiny heads tucked right down onto their huge bodies to keep warm but they were the most enchanting things ever. I had to work very hard to stop Hazel from kidnapping one and bringing it home. I think only the thought that it would make her pack heavier stopped her.



A portion of 500,000 penguins



Hazel restraining herself from kidnapping him



It's so fluffy!

I am not sure that there is any way I can actually describe what 500, 000 King penguins looks, smells and sounds like. The adults give off this harsh klaxoning call while the chicks whistle. There was just so much going on all around us that you didn’t know where to look. Everywhere were adults feeding young ones. The chicks would come up to their adults and whistle enticingly while tapping gently at their bills or necks. The adults would then stretch their necks up as high as possible and proceed to retch noisily until they had regurgitated a sufficient amount of fish and then would bend over the chick, open their bill and the chick would feed from it. It was incredible to see behaviour that most people will only ever see on TV happen right there in front of us. When not watching that we could see other adults herding the young ones away from where they obviously weren’t meant to be going, by tapping them gently with their flippers. Others were quarrelling noisily and yet more were just moving around in one glorious mass of penguin existence.

Kings of the castle

Poser

Preparing for dinner



Reflections



Hazel's hand vs. Giant Petrel's footprints

We read the hut visitors book that evening to see who had been here and in it there was a couple of entries from a BBC camera crew who had been there to film for ‘Frozen Planet’. In the older hut books there were also entries from some of the military chaps who had been there on patrol, including a couple of entries from the Gurkha regiment. I am not sure why but it seemed very odd to see Nepalese written in a book on a bleak beach in the middle of South Georgia.

The next day dawned, yep you guessed it: foggy and damp. We redonned our wet socks (dried in the lid of the pasta pan the evening before) and the sodden waders (no, the patching hadn’t worked very well) and made our way back to the colony. This time we copied the locals who I had noticed crossing the river by a much shallower route during my morning ablutions. We went further than the day before, right to the other end of the beach and had our lunch watching the migration of Kings from one end of the beach to the other. They all seemed to be wanting to go to the North end of the beach and we couldn’t figure out why on earth. It was very amusing to sit and ‘people’ watch during our lunch, the variety of sizes and shapes was extraordinary and there were quite a number of fat ones who were having great trouble waddling along. It was wonderful. The best bit was watching them cross rivers. It was as if they didn’t want to get their ‘hands’ wet. They would lift their flippers high above the water and wade through the current. Sometimes it would get to be too strong or too deep for them and they would dip their heads and swim the rest of the way but if they could they would stay wading. Such silly birds.

After hearing the forecast for the last few days of our sojourn we decided to leave on Thursday afternoon, find our tent and then camp at Hound Bay (which is about half way). There was snow forecast and the first part of the route above the hut is steep enough that it could have caused us problems if the snow got any deeper. We started out in the afternoon with packs that were lighter than when we had arrived (through having eaten food and used fuel) but still heavier than we could wish. My knee was still playing up so Hazel, saint that she is, broke trail the entire way, while carrying the heavier pack (I could not persuade her to give me more, no matter how hard I tried). I am not sure how she did it since the snow conditions were miserable and for the first hour or so every two steps we took we would slide one back. I navigated us back to our tent and after that, even though our packs were slightly heavier, we walked with a lighter step knowing that we wouldn’t have a cold night in bivvy bags and that the hardest bit was behind us.

We camped as low as we could above Hound Bay, ensuring that we could clear enough snow so as not to be lying on the stuff but yet had enough to use for water. We thought it would be a cold night but actually in the end it wasn’t too bad at all, much warmer than both of us thought it might be. It snowed constantly through the night, not too heavily, but enough for us to be sure that we had made the right decision to leave on Thursday. After a breakfast of ‘Hot Cereal Start’ (a rat pack that has 702 calories, perfect for starting a hard day’s work) and slightly kero tasting tea, we broke camp and headed back to Sorling Beach for our pickup. As we arrived at the beach we saw the first sun that we had seen all holiday, it was still covered in fog but it was there. Annoying.



After a night at Hound Bay



The only sun we saw all holiday

We arrived back to find Pipit’s starboard engine still in multiple pieces over the boatshed but progress has been made and it seems to be going well. I will spend the next week helping where I can, trying to stay out of the way and doing the other routine maintenance, till the weekend, when hopefully they will have finished and I can get going on the chipping off of the old paint and painting on of the new stuff. I just hope I can get it done in time to catch the next tide. It looks like next weekend could be a little rushed but then that is how boating works.

This week wasn’t the most fantastic in terms of weather and navigation but we had a very enjoyable time with the penguins and that colony is something I will NEVER forget.