The beginning of the end

At the end of my last blog I was about to go and meet the new winterers. They have now been on base for one week exactly and they seem to have settled in pretty well.

This week has been pretty manic. We started handover on Monday. My new guys, Tim and Matthew,  are both experienced boatmen. Tim was the boaty at Rothera (he is the 10 month boaty while Matthew is the boaty with the yearlong contract) and they are both very good. However neither of them have had more than the day’s course on a jet boat that BAS sent them on before they came down, and that was a single engine jetboat, so completely different to what we have here.

I will admit that after the first hour on the water with them I did think that we would have to spend every possible hour training, but as the week has gone on we have spent some more time on the water and they are getting on very well. They had to learn quickly, which they were able to do,  and I am very pleased and less worried about leaving “my” boats in their hands. 

The new guys on Prion

 

On Tuesday we went round East Cumberland Bay on a local knowledge gathering tour. We went right up to the Nordenskold Glacier. I rather took it as probably my last visit to all these places that have been part of my working world for a year. A farewell tour maybe. We went up to the glacier and I took control of the boat as they took their photos. It was glorious. I noticed about 50 terns fluttering at the base of the glacier; they must have been feeding off plankton attracted by the nutrients released when it calves. It was a lovely sight, as were the icebergs, and I was reminded yet again why I love this job. 

The Nordenskold again

Dirty iceberg

On Wednesday the JCR returned from relief at Bird Island to do relief here. This meant that a year’s worth of dry and frozen food and drink came off. We were also meant to receive all the cargo that we had ordered over the year. Due to a small timing issue some of the cargo didn’t make the JCR and we will have to get it at last call on the Shack in March. Last year we had to do relief by cargo tender since the weather was not right for her to come alongside but luckily this year she came alongside and we could manage things much quicker. It snowed for the first part of Wednesday which made tallying off the food boxes a bit of a chore, with soggy lists, but it soon cleared and we spent the rest of the day ‘happily’ emptying boxes and putting them away. It was extremely impressive to see how tidy the dry food store was compared to last year. Hazel and Julie (the new doc) did a fantastic job.

Luckily due to weather (perfect weather is needed for relief at BI and they hadn’t quite finished it yet) and BASMU (the BAS medical unit) requesting that the docs get more than the one day handover received last year, the JCR stayed till Friday morning. This meant that we could have a BBQ on Thursday after finishing relief and a bit of a social with the crew and scientists aboard. Before that my new guys and I managed to label, book in and put away most of the boaties’ cargo which was an impressive feat since it took Matt Kenney and me three days last year.

Friday saw Hazel leaving South Georgia to act as the JCR doc for the next 5 months. I am not going to describe it too much but it was an unbelievable wrench to see her go. To add insult to injury the JCR stayed in the bay doing scientific sampling all day. It did luckily mean that when she broke the wire for some experiment or other we could provide a replacement. It was quite a fortuitous breakage since Hazel, in the rush, had managed to leave her walking boots behind. She would need these for BI and Signy before I could deliver them to get picked up in Stanley, so when a boat came back for wire I slipped the boots into the bag and she managed to get them and use them the next day. 

Hazel with a Wandering Albatross on Bird Island

 

The rest of Friday was spent going up Morraine Fjord in the RIBs for more local knowledge (and to try to clear my head) and clearing up.

On Saturday I had a dreaded Saturday Cook. It was the first big one of the season and wasn’t helped by the fact that there were no potatoes delivered since there are none to be had in Stanley. It did mean however that I started using the rather large tinned potato mountain we have (Hazel made a mistake in ordering, her only one which is very impressive, and we got more in when we could already have done with getting rid of some). It went well otherwise, especially since Julie very kindly helped out by making a delicious rice pudding and generally being a brick in the kitchen.

HMS Protector arrived on Saturday so I did boating in the middle of cooking. I couldn’t let my two new guys come alongside a ship in jetboats for the first time ever without a couple of hints and tips and then Protector kindly let us practice alongside which was great. Sunday dawned miserable so I went to the church service held by some of the crew of Protector in the church. Good old classic hymns we could all sing without accompaniment: ‘Battle hymn of the Republic’, ‘Give me peace in my heart’ and ‘For those in peril on the sea’. It was lovely. I then took Julie and the ship’s doc to the graveyard. I realised that I had not yet got a photo of myself with Shackleton’s grave (it is funny what you leave to the last minute). In  the afternoon I walked over to Maiviken with Micky. When I first got here it seemed to take forever to get over to the hut and it was a real slog, now it takes me 45 mins at a push. Remarkable how hill fit I have become. We went over to Maiviken to see the first fur seal pup born in the area. Hazel and Micky ran over to see it on Tuesday but I hadn’t seen it yet and didn’t want to leave without seeing at least one this year. 

HMS Protector

By Shackleton's grave

Furry pup

Discovering the sky

Splendid

Littering the place

Let me in!

 I finished the week with my last ever lates rounds which was a very good feeling. I then woke up on Monday morning with the slightly sickening realisation that this is my last full week on the island.

I suppose I am going to have to pack quite soon .........