Weather

One of the main issues about living on a Sub Antarctic Island is that sometimes the weather gods remember that they have been rather too kind to you recently and make up for it. Last week was utterly glorious, really stunning weather that made the world seem like it was made out of cut glass. This week, after Monday when I took the opportunity to change all the fuel filters in the jet boats, the weather turned in a nasty way.

The combination of wind and snow meant that venturing out of Everson and down to the boat shed was an adventure in itself. I couldn’t open the engine bays because I didn’t want to expose the engines to the type of fine driving snow that managed to get into my pit room through a closed window. We wore snow goggles to go anywhere and I was restricted to inside jobs. Hazel very kindly helped me to do the lifejacket service which is a big job by yourself but we managed to do in two days. I had to take two jackets out of service but luckily they were spares so no one had been wandering around with non functional lifejackets which was a relief. 

On Monday, as well as the fuel filter servicing, I helped Hazel give a first aid session to the crew on the Pharos. We went through basic stuff and what they could do with their equipment on board. It used to be on ships that you only had to have done one first aid course ever in your career and Hazel said that most of the crew on the JCR had last done one in 1998. This is insane. The CPR protocols alone seem to change every few years. In 1998 the ratio of breaths to compressions would have been probably about 5:2 (15 compressions to 2 breaths) but now it is 30:2 because they have discovered that maintaining the pressure (through compressions) is only possible by keeping the number of compressions high and that air is drawn into the lungs through the action of compression any way. This is all changing and now the Master of a ship has to do a course every 5 years which is important since they are usually the medic on board. Anyway. We did the first aid course and it seemed to go very well so we are going to try and incorporate a scenario into a session next week.

On Friday I had to take Pat out to a couple of shops for Transhipping paperwork. We caught a lull in the wind and took it. Doing prestart checks when the wind is driving spindrift into your ear is not fun. In the middle of the night the ships had to break off their work and leave the bay the weather was so bad. Also on Friday we celebrated Chilean Independence day (about half of the crew on board the Pharos is Chilean) with a big BBQ in one of the holds in the Pharos. It was very impressive the way they had got things like disco lights and a good sound system together in the hold. After the BBQ we had games. These were all ‘mess’ games and were quite physical and good fun. The most fun was tug of war where we sat in a line, each person holding onto the person in front and the person at the front holding onto a stick. When Go was shouted we had to get the stick off the other team. Hazel was sitting behind me and crushed most of my abdominal organs up into my ribs which meant that I was very nearly sick into Rod’s ear but luckily it all came right in the end. It was a really lovely night, the only thing to mar it was the fact that I was on lates and nearly got blown over by the wind when coming from the fuel farm back to the base.

The only thing to do on a weekend with weather like this is to spend it in the chippy shop. Hazel and I were in there most of the weekend, mainly making a mess. It is good to have two of us we decided since it means that we can help with power tools and can check each other’s maths when it comes to cutting bits of wood and checking we are cutting the mitre joints the correct way round.

It was Hazel’s Saturday cook this week so I gave her a hand in the kitchen. She made incredibly delicious tartlets with stilton, spinach and pecans, followed by chicken stuffed with brie, wrapped in bacon and mustard, served with Hasselback potatoes, broccoli and green beans. For pudding she made a cherry almond tart which was utterly delicious. All in all it went down very well.

Of course, the weather gods have decided to laugh at us again and we woke up to perfect weather this Monday morning which is deeply annoying but it does mean that I will be able to get into the engine bay and star the myriad services that all seem to have come up on AMOS at the same time.