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.