Traps and that hat

 Since being on holiday over last weekend not much has happened. We have had the whole gamut of South Georgia weather with gales and snow storms one day and painfully beautiful days the next.

The only boating that happened during the week was when I took Nik out to Sooty Bluff to deploy a series of traps to see if he could get more larvae at depth. We put an anchor in at 60m of water (which here is only about 20/30m off the shore) and then every 10m he hooked one of his traps. The trouble with poor Nik's project is that he doesn’t know if the larvae are around at the moment, if they are where they would be and even if they are attracted to light (this last is important since he is using light as ‘bait’ to bring the larvae in). He came into this Post Doc when it was half way through and he is picking up the pieces as well as he can but it is rather tricky.We returned the next day with high hopes but after getting aching arms hauling up the anchor, unfortunately no luck; he caught a rather wonderful shrimp and that was it.

If the main bulk of our boating happens at a weekend it can be infuriating, especially over a bank holiday as we've just had.Very luckily, even though we were expecting boats on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday, in the end they only arrived into the bay on Saturday night so we were able to have a free day on Saturday. I woke earlyish on Saturday to one of the most beautiful days we have had in a long time, if not ever. Hazel was already up and we decided on a fast breakfast and then to head out. We had decided on Friday that we wanted to see somewhere new so we headed up to Echo Pass.

I was on snowshoes and Hazel was on skis. It was a truly glorious day. Every facet of the snow was a diamond glinting a rainbow back up to the flawlessly blue sky and the air was crisp and clean. Actually the air was rather more than crisp, it was really rather chilly, I reckon it was about -8’C which was fine when we were moving but stopping for any time necessitated the putting on of multiple layers.

I thought I might have a slight difficulty keeping up with Hazel on skis but on the flat or uphill I was just as fast as her, and on icy bits faster, which was reassuring. We stopped at Upper Gull Lake for smoko (a chocolate bar) and then carried on round the corner. We had to negotiate the flanks of Orca (a hill) and were in the shade for most of that which made it a little chillier than before but after a bit of sliding on a steepish slope on Hazel's, we crested the pass into the sunshine. We had discovered on our holiday at Maiviken that the other side of the peninsula is in the sun pretty much all day, whereas the base only gets direct sunlight for a few hours a day at the moment. It is amazing the difference actually feeling the sun on your face makes. One feels rejuvenated and in a far more benevolent mood with the world, or at least I do. The maxim of “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” isn’t quite right I find; rather it's “You don’t know what you’re missing until it comes back”. I can’t even imagine what seeing the sun for the first time after a winter of complete darkness must feel like, as happens on some of the bases.  

First glimpse over the pass

 

Deadman's in the sun

 From the top of the pass we looked down upon the other bay and the other side of the peninsula. The Neumayer glacier swept up into the hinterland of the island, beckoning us to follow it all the way in. The exploring part of me, the small voice that keeps quiet most of the time but sometimes speaks out, called loudly then; it wanted me to continue until I had found what was at the end of that glacier and to go further and further again until I had come to the other side of the island and even then to continue. Luckily it is not an overpowering voice and I can satisfy it by simply doing something new, smaller in scope but new nonetheless. 

 

The Neumayer Glacier beckons

 

On the return

At the top of the pass Hazel took her skins off (on her skis) and proceeded to fly down the shallow slope that leads down to Sphagnum valley and to Harpon. I plodded along behind as fast as I could without tripping over and the feeling of flying through the crisp air was wonderful, I regret my wretched knees which stop me skiing but am determined one day to learn (just not here where access to a hospital is non existant).

We reached a small ravine with waist deep snow that we decided it was unnecessary to cross so we stopped and dug ourselves a ‘snow sofa’ which we lined with our bivy bags. We both decided never to go off on a snowy day hike without a roll mat in the future; our fronts were warmed by the sun but our backs and bottoms were decidedly chilly. Nevertheless we had a lovely lunch and then decided to head back into the valley on the base side of the peninsula for a little exploration. It was so cold that it took both of us half an hour to regain feeling in our hands and then at the top of the pass we had to stop again for me to fix my snowshoe which had snapped at a rather vital pivot point. Duck tape is a distinct necessity in life and I never go anywhere without some wrapped round a pencil or my walking poles. [Star Wars geeky joke alert: Why is Duck tape like The Force? Because it has a light side, a dark side and it holds the universe together!]

Snow sofa

 

Yep, my water bottle froze

We returned to base elated and ready for our next adventure. 

This came in the form of boating all the next morning which was lovely. Again the weather was perfect and we got some good photos of the entrance to the bays, which is rare. It was distinctly cold and both Hazel (who was my crew) and I lost all feeling in our feet waiting on the boat. We had another ship to deal with but in a very civilised manner we came back ashore and Jo, Hazel and I had a brunch of Eggs Benedict, my favourite. 

Transshipping

 

View from the jetboat

 

Next stop: South Africa

Once we had finished boating we went out again. This time Nik and Jo joined us and we went to the dam at the top of Gull Lake to wait for the arrival of the Hercules. The RAF sometimes send Hercules planes down here from the Falklands for a couple of reasons, one of which is to aid with fisheries protection. They have to refuel to get here and back and they can’t stay over the bays for very long but it was worth it to see it fly in under the mountains, it was rather a thrilling sound.

 

Hercules (look hard - it's tiny)

All in all it has been a lovely bank holiday weekend and if we could just order some more of that weather the rest of the week will be perfect.

A Weekend Away

I was meant to have been describing a holiday to Harpon, a hut on the other side of the Thatcher peninsula; I am not.

I will first go over last week. It was a week full of boating. I managed to pass both Rod and Joe out as launch coxes. This means I now have three backup coxes which makes my life a lot easier and means I can relax a little, not much but a little.I was meant to test Joe on Tuesday when I took Jo out for transhipping paperwork to La Manche (a reefer) and Antarctic Sea (a vacuum krill vessel, which has a net almost permanently in the water from which they suck up the krill that is caught. It means they can haul in much larger catches and less time is lost by ‘shooting’ and hauling the nets). When we launched and headed out to the vessels it suddenly became apparent that not only were we not going to be doing any testing, I didn’t really want to be out on the water at all. The wind picked up suddenly to our operational limits and the direction it was coming in meant that getting Jo onto La Manche was tricky to say the least. We discussed it and I had to promise that if she got on I would be able to get her back off again because La Manche had to leave for Stanley that night and Jo did NOT want to be on her when she left. I managed to get her on but unfortunately due to the size of the swell I was against the wooden rungs of the pilot ladder, not the rubber ones and I managed to break a rung. This meant that I had to get her off from Antarctic Sea which was giving less of a lee (shelter) from the wind and meant that my stern would be to the wind (which always makes things trickier) but after some manoeuvring and testing I managed it and the vessels managed to leave on time without an extra passenger on board.  

Harpon is a hut the other side of the peninsula which neither Hazel nor Jo have been to yet. To get there you either have a 4 hour walk (more like 5 or 6 in these snow conditions) over Echo Pass in the middle of the mountains that bisect the peninsula, or you have to go by boat around into West Cumberland Bay and go right down to the very end of it. We were meant to leave on Thursday by boat. This caused a little difficulty for me. I am currently the only boating officer on the island and while I have passed out some very competent RIB coxes and my Launch coxes (all my launch coxes are also RIB coxes) are getting there, if they were to take us round in any but the perfect weather conditions and if anything were to happen then I would feel incredibly guilty and it would have repercussions for future boating officers. Therefore when Thursday dawned foggy and unpleasant with a shocking forecast of wind we decided to postpone till Friday. On Thursday afternoon the Government Officers got a call from the Captain of the Saga Sea requesting permission to bring a crew member ashore for medical treatment. This is one of the reasons that the base has a doctor, to provide medical care for fishermen down here in these treacherous waters. Some vessels have their own doctor (and dentist) aboard but most don’t. Unfortunately she was delayed getting in so our departure was also delayed. Actually it was lucky that it was, since as I went out to collect the ill crew member and the mate (who would translate Russian) the wind proved itself to be too strong for the trip round to Harpon so Jo, Hazel and I made other plans.

We decided that we would head over to Maiviken for a long weekend. Because we were within an hour and a half’s walk from base we didn’t need to take a tent (we slept in the hut) and because there are already sleeping bags there we didn’t need to take our own. This meant that all the food that we had planned to take by boat we could still take because it would just replace the weight of the tent and bags; my pack was still lighter than it has been in a long time when going on holiday.

When Hazel and I go on holiday together three things are known: 1. The weather will be poo, 2. Someone will get ill on base (usually more than one) and 3. We will eat indifferent food (either a pasta sauce that we have pre prepared and we will eat every night for three nights or rat packs). This time was no exception, the weather was poo, poor old Erny came down with a stomach bug and we were planning on pasta sauce. Jo however took it upon herself to educate us in the way of camping food so we took no pre prepared food and had an excellent few days food wise. For ease our way is still better but this was much more enjoyable.

The first night, which was Jo’s birthday, we had a creamy, tomatoey pasta sauce with dried mushrooms and chorizo that Jo had brought with her from her house in Spain. The second night we had chilli con carne made again with dried mushrooms and some excellent dried mince that the Rat eradication project had left us. The third night we had flavoured couscous with dried mushrooms and the last of the chorizo cooked in red wine. It really was incredible.

Unfortunately the bunks in the hut really are very uncomfortable and Jo who has a dodgy back anyway was soon crippled. She managed it well though and we even received visitors from the base in the form of Rod and Nik. After a  lovely lunch we then wandered down to the Sealers Cave which I have mentioned before. As we walked it was slightly surreal, the sun was shining merrily (it was an odd sensation to be in direct sunlight all day over the other side of the hills to base) but at the same time snowflakes were floating ever so gently through the air. Out of the wind it was actually very warm, so warm we didn’t have to put an extra layer on when we had stopped so we made tea and lounged around. It was lovely. On the return to the hut we had gin and tonics out in the sun sitting in a ‘snow sofa’ that we had dug out and insulated with roll mats. We only went back into the hut when the sun dipped low and the wind increased.

The second day (Sunday) we decided to brave the wind (which was very strong) and explore a region of lakes up to the left of Deadman’s Pass. We struck out into the wind and sun and had a fantastic morning wandering around a winter wonderland of hillocks and lakes, all disguised by the snow. It is a real pleasure to be able to re-explore places where you have been in different conditions. It is one of the reasons that I never want to live in a place with no seasons, the changes wrought by the weather are incredible. The only downside to the day was the stinging snow flung into our face by 50-60kt winds. Both Jo and I were knocked off our feet at one point (how Hazel stayed up I am not sure, I will say it is because I took the brunt of the gust for her). When we descended a little lower, true to our typically British nature we had lunch sitting on the snowy side of a hill enjoying the sunshine and stoically ignoring the occasional gust of wind that blew the cheese off our oatcakes.

On Monday we returned to base but not before we spent a delightful morning down on the beach collecting Fur Seal poo for Daniel. He has to collect poo to check what they have been eating to verify theories about the effect that the fisheries have on the ecosystem etc. He is still at sea observing on Antarctic Bay so every other week a willing (or not so willing) volunteer trudges over to Maivken to collect poo for him. We said we would while we were there so we dutifully headed down to the beach to perform our duties. Since I have a dog and am therefore used to the disgusting job I was designated ‘poo picker’ and collected while Hazel dug them out (they had frozen into the snow). It was not the most pleasant of jobs and I am quite glad I don’t have to do that every week. To be honest I am not sure that we didn’t accidentally collect Elephant Seal poo but since we couldn’t ask anyone on the beach who had deposited what it was a little hit or miss.

Hopefully we will make it to Harpon soon but till then we are all rejuvenated by a couple of nights off base and I am ready to throw myself into another week of boating  and maintenance.

I will try and persuade Hazel to give me some of her photos since she does take much better ones than me, but in the meantime here are mine:

Denizens of Tortula Beach

 

Maiviken from the lakes

 

On top of the windy world

Hazel poo-picking

Well, this doesn't look like winter on a sub-Antarctic island .......

Boat School, Doc School and life in between

 As promised last week here is the link to the films for the 2013 Antarctic Film Festival:

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B6xKzE6p5KMFX0FrZXJlV3lkTDQ&usp

(Click on “48 Hour Category”, then “KEP South Georgia”)

This week has been full of different ‘schools’. In order to pass people out as jetboat coxes they need to be able to do a bit of simple navigation, just so they can get themselves home if their electronic navigation fails. I therefore taught a bit of simple navigation on Monday. I am not very good at navigation myself but managed to teach it without confusing either myself or the others too much which was a bonus. 

After that we went down to the jetty and I got into my drysuit and jumped in so that the others could experience how difficult it actually is to get people out of the water in a boat with such high sides. They figured out that they needed to get me to the back deck which is lower and there they could get me on much easier but I think it gave some of them pause for thought since they hadn’t realised how tricky it would be. 

After being recovered a couple of times (photo: H. Woodland)

 

Rod enjoying far more than necessary pushing me overboard (photo: S. Gregory)

Everyone seems to be on a bit of a fitness drive at the moment. On Wednesday there were 6 people in the gym which is great but it does mean a little bit of cooperation is needed to try and fit everyone in. Luckily on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays I can remove myself from the competition: Hazel and I, and now Nik, do gymnastic rings. It is a series of simple exercises such as press ups, dips and pull ups but because we do them on unstable rings hanging from the roof it engages pretty much all of the muscles in your body just to stay steady. It is amazing how tricky it is and how much of a difference it can make to one’s fitness. Hazel and I have a healthy competition going but we only push each other so we can get better.

On Wednesday it was Sarah’s (the manager of the museum and the wife of one of the GOs) birthday so we were all invited round to Carse House for dinner. Pat and Sarah were here during the years that it was under the control of the military. One of the regiments that was sent here to garrison the island was the Gurkhas (in fact they were the garrison a couple of times). From them Sarah was given ‘the Gurkha Cookbook’ and we had a selection of curries which were utterly delicious. It was a lovely night and a reminder yet again of the luxury of sitting on sofas.

On Thursday we had Doc School which was a very good session. Hazel set us a scenario and let us get on with it, then, when we had got as far as we thought we could, we debriefed and ran through what went wrong and what we could have done better. Hazel then showed us how she would have run the situation if she had been doing it. The situation was a cruise ship passenger coming in with shortness of breath and being a known asthmatic. We got to give Salbutamol (the stuff inside an inhaler) through a nebuliser which vaporises the liquid drug and gives it with oxygen. It was interesting to remind ourselves of our limitations and what we can actually do while here. It also gave Joe a chance to remind himself of the contents of the surgery. He will be the paramedic cover when Hazel, Jo and I go on holiday to Harpon at the end of next week.

We had a number of ships in and therefore did a fair bit of boating which is always good. The main other thing that happened was that I passed Hazel out as a jetboat cox. This means that she can back me up when I take the boats out to ships. Now I just need to pass Rod and Joe out, both of whom will be staying next year and therefore will be backing up the new boaty when he is alone. I am very pleased that I have started passing people as coxes and I know that Hazel was very pleased as well.

Not much else happened this week. Next week my blog will be late since I will only be returning from Harpon on Monday. I hope you all have a good week till then. 

It really does look like a film set

 

Spot the penguin

Leopards, Aliens and everything in between

On Monday we said ‘au revoir’ to Daniel as he set out once again on a fishing vessel as an observer. The vessel that he went on, Antarctic Bay, is one of the smallest in the fleet and was so small that when Rod drove towards her as she was moored up to another vessel he thought there was only one ship there. He will return soon we hope but it all depends on how the fishing goes before the longline season ends on August 31^st.

After dropping Daniel Hazel and I launched one of the RIBs in order to help Nik set his traps. Unfortunately this involved anchoring buoys in the kelp which is a pain. We then ran a line from the buoy to the shore on which he will attach his traps so that he can pull them in and out without needing a boat. The only trouble has been that the floats of the buoys get caught in ice which means that he can’t pull them in. We are going to try and fix this by reducing the floatation and increasing the weight so that the float sits further under the surface and therefore the ice. The traps so far haven’t caught any fish larvae which is their purpose but they are catching other organisms. Since it is not quite the season for fish larvae yet Nik is not worried and is just pleased that the traps do work. We will now just have to play with the floatation and then put more traps out soon.

Once we had put the two traps down Hazel and I landed the RIB. Just as I had got out of the water and into the JCB to pull it out Hazel noticed the Leopard seal in the water right next to the RIB. It came up very close and seemed to be having a real look round, not only at the boat but at both Hazel (who was still in the RIB) and me in the JCB. We put out an ‘all stations’ call on the radio to alert everyone that he was there and everyone came down. It was incredibly worth it. He played around the jetty, going from one side to the other for about 45 mins/an hour. We got some amazing photos and film. Rod even got him nuzzling the lens of his camera on the end of a tripod in the water. It really was incredible and a wonderful privilege. 

A visitor

Our leopard seal (photo: Sue Gregory)

The rest of the week passed mostly quietly after that. On Wednesday I gave a lesson in towing to everyone on base. It was a good session and everyone got to feel the differences in how boats handle under different towing conditions. I always forget how much I like teaching until it comes to things like this and people go away with (I hope) an understanding of what I was trying to teach them. 

Teaching the alongside tow (photo: Sue Gregory)

 The two main events of this week happened this weekend. Paula left us on Saturday. She was employed as a boaty for 8 months under a new trial of having boaties here for different amounts of time. Her presence on base will be really missed by everyone and it will be a different base for the rest of the winter.

The other event is the Antarctic 48 hour film festival. We have 48 hours in which to come up with a concept for a film, shoot, it, edit it and upload it to a dedicated website. Once that is done all the bases taking part across Antarctica download the films and in a few weeks we will all sit down, watch them and vote on the winner. 

The winner sets the five elements that have to be included in next year’s film. The elements this time are: A gingerbread man, a ping pong ball, a bath tub, the sound of an authentic sneeze, and the phrase “voulez-vous couchez avec moi ce  soir?”. We have decided to do a spoof of ‘Alien’ and it has been great fun. We started on Friday with my setting smoke and parachute flares off (with the correct warning for all vessels in the vicinity of course). After seeing Paula off on Saturday morning we then set down to the serious business of filming. It is going to be an excellent film. Hazel and I were in charge of the props and special effects and really, who needs CGI? We made a lot of fake blood and a LOT of mess and had a great amount of fun. My heart beat has a starring role in the hospital scene. Due to Nik’s costume we couldn’t have the heart rate monitor on him so I lay under the bed with the leads attached to me, trying to make sure I kept my heart rate steady and trying not to be seen by the camera. Unfortunately the oxygen saturation monitor kept malfunctioning (at least I hope it was malfunctioning) and the alarm kept going off, usually in the middle of  a scene, but we got it all done in the end. I don’t yet know the website address but when I do I will put it up. The quality of all the films from all the various bases are usually varying but they are always good to watch.

Today Rod, Sue and Joe are all in Rod’s office editing and adding sound effects and music. Hazel and I were summoned to create a spaceship landing scene which involved a lot of flour, a ping pong ball, syringes and plastic tubing and as usual a fair amount of mess. As well as being prop master extraordinaire Hazel took it upon herself to be the stills photographer and as ever she did a fantastic job. She took something like 350 photos so I am adding only a very few but I thought you might like to see something of life ‘on set’.

So for this week “That’s a wrap”.  

Prepping a scene . . . (photo: Hazel Woodland)

 

. . .  and another (in -10 degrees) (photo: Hazel Woodland)

Killing off Joe (photo: Hazel Woodland)

My starring role (photo: Hazel Woodland)

Special effects department (photo: Hazel Woodland)

Who needs CGI? (photo: Hazel Woodland)

The strain of filming takes its toll (yes, I was actually asleep) (photo: Hazel Woodland)

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. . .