The Week I Wish Never Was

Last week was perhaps one of the more unpleasant of not only my time on South Georgia, but ever. I will not go over it but all I have to say is that I thoroughly dislike engines and engine bays at the moment.

On Monday we took the mail out to the Richmond and then said goodbye to her. I then proceeded to work with Erny while Hazel and Jo got ready to go on the holiday I was meant to be on, until engine problems intervened. On Tuesday we dropped them off at Sorling in some of the most beautiful weather we have had all year. They had a fantastic holiday which I was very pleased about. I got back to work and struggled with those blasted engines on Prion.

Finally on Thursday we had worked on her enough to be able to take her on a short, gentle sea trial. Joe, Erny and I took her out and pottered around at 1200rpm maximum. We returned to base and Erny and I worked till supper time changing injectors and testing compression. After that we had to leave her for a couple of days.

We collected Hazel and Jo from their holiday looking rather sunburnt but very happy which was lovely. It was very nice to have them both back on base. That night the builders arrived and we started to do cargo early on Saturday morning. They took two diggers and started to try and open the track to Grytviken but it seems that there is more snow than they are used to at the beginning of the season so it took rather longer than it should.

On Sunday I got off base for the first time in two weeks and we went to see the state of the pupping beaches across the bay. When we were last there two weeks ago there were 4 pups; on Sunday there were about 75, all barking and suckling and rolling around in the sand trying to stay cool. It was the most wonderful sight. It made me remember why I am really here, not to be in engine bays but to enjoy this amazing place.

You can't see me .....

Sand bath

Chinstrap

The wind on the hill

Lenticular

The ground was littered with pups

That heartsink moment

It is 0200 on Friday morning. I am standing in the engine bay of one of my boats; I am cold and wet despite my drysuit. I am exhausted physically and emotionally and know that I still have several more hours of work ahead of me before I can find my bed. However finally I am no longer waist deep in water. Then it starts to rain!

No, this is not the start of a film I have just seen. This was my world on Friday night. Sue who was on lates (the one who does the rounds to make sure everything is ok) woke me up at midnight telling me that there was something wrong with one of my boats. We went back down to the jetty and she was very low in the water. There was at least one alarm going off in her and I wasn’t sure what was happening. I opened the engine bays and my heart dropped like a stone into my boots. The engines were covered in water, covered! If they weren’t bolted down they would have been swimming.

1m³ of sea water weighs about 1 metric ton. The engine bay has space for about 2.5m³ of seawater. I immediately sent Sue to wake Erny (the mechanic and Rod, the BC) and got into my dry suit. I found a bucket and started bailing. Erny arrived and we started to pump the water out. After what seemed like forever (but was in fact only about 45 mins of me bailing furiously before the pump started pulling water) we started winning and I found that the water intake pipe on the seawater pump (which drives the water round the engines to cool them) had popped off. Erny and I had been working on the seawater pump and I obviously hadn’t made properly sure the pipe was on so when we tested it, it must have popped off and we didn’t notice. We reattached it and drained the boat. Then we started the real work. Just a hint: diesel engines don’t like swimming. We found that water had got in everywhere. Not just water, salt water. We worked furiously to drain the water and contaminated oil from the sump and put new oil back in. The engine takes 12l of oil. We drained 30l of water and oil from a single engine. I kept willing it to be a nightmare and to be able to wake up in my own bed but unfortunately that didn’t happen. We finally gave up trying to start the engines at 0400 when we discovered that there was not enough power in the batteries.

Friday morning heralded the arrival of HMS Richmond. I then spent the next two days helping her boat to ferry 80 naval personnel ashore each day. Every break I got I was back in the engine bay with Erny and Joe the sparky. While working like a demon I was luckily able to enjoy the naval visit. Hazel and I were invited to Carse House by Pat and Sarah to have dinner with 5 people from the ship and on Saturday night we were invited aboard for ‘penguin racing’ - horse racing but with penguins. It was a fun night and a fun visit and they are back at the end of October so hopefully we will be able to do more with them and I won’t have this engine looming over me.

I was meant to be going on holiday to Sorling with Jo and Hazel this week but that was not to be. Today I dropped them off in the most glorious weather we have seen in a while and returned to my poor engines. I hope they have the most wonderful time. If the weather stays as it is forecast they should have.

We have had to change both alternators, both starter motors; take out and check the injectors on each engine, check the valve clearances and tomorrow we will be checking the timing belt. It has taken 5 days and we just put them into gear at 1600 today. The worry is that if we get them up to power and something seizes they could explode, either inside or more dramatically. We are doing everything in our power to stop that from happening.

On a more cheerful note: Elephant seals have started coming onto our beach. We have had two births and are expecting many more from the very pregnant females lounging around. The males are beginning to get a bit antsy and we are all waiting for the first ‘flipper of love’ moment.

Last weekend was the last of the winter. This week will see the return of the builders to the island. I am looking forward to it and am hoping that I will be out of the engine bay by the time they arrive. Wish us luck.

Return of the Ellies

The weather gods continued to mock us with perfect weather on Tuesday. In the end it was too much and at lunch time on Tuesday Hazel and I downed tools, packed and headed out to camp at Penguin River. It was the most perfect weather, not a cloud in the sky, bright blue heavens and good firm snow underfoot. Penguin River is just across the cove from the base but since we haven’t yet installed the chain ferry that Hazel and I keep trying to persuade Jo that we need, it takes about an hour to walk to, especially if carrying a tent, stove fuel and food. On our way over there we met a number of Elephant seals, both male and female, lounging on the beach. Now the Ellies have been slowly returning to the beaches over the past few weeks. The males are here to establish themselves as beach masters on their chosen bit of shoreline and the females to give birth and then mate again. We wandered along the beach chatting to the seals and encouraging the females to pop their pups out so we could see one. Unfortunately none complied there and then so we continued on our way.

We arrived at Penguin River around 1500 and decided that we would camp ON the river. Of course it is frozen but there is also a small gravel bar in the middle where the penguins sit when they are there so we pitched on what we hoped was that bar. Once we had pitched camp we decided to make the most of the sun before it dipped behind the mountains and so we wandered up to Discovery point. This is one side of the entrance to Moraine Fjord and has a wreck of the Lyn, a fishing boat, on it. The other side of the entrance (Dartmouth Point) also has a wreck, the Maresco. I can’t remember which one grounded first in a storm but the other thought that the lights from the first ship meant that there was safety there, anchored, dragged and now there are two wrecks just sitting on the moraine bar. Luckily no one was hurt and no environmental damage was caused but there is a lot of driftwood that comes off them and arrives on the beaches. A good supply for woodwork. 

Campsite on the river       (photo: H. Woodland)

Campsite       (photo: H. Woodland)

Wreck of the Lyn    (photo: H. Woodland)

We walked right to the end of the point and discovered that it is rather a busy place with Furries and Ellies all over the place. There was one particularly large Ellie male  pestering two females who had made the mistake of hauling up near him. He obviously hadn’t read the manual that said that he has to wait till they have had their pups before trying to mate with them.

What big teeth I have!       (photo: H. Woodland)

 Standing in the sun it was a lovely temperature but as soon as the sun dipped below the mountains it was freezing. We hurried back to the tent and our big jackets which we had left there. After our sched (the call into base), a cup of tea and some rather good dehydrated beef stroganoff we chatted and lounged around the tent. A couple of hours later we realised that there was a light outside the tent so we opened the door to find a nearly full moon beaming down on us in all her glory. This precipitated a discussion as to whether it is a cat or a man in the moon (man obviously). We then lay in our sleeping bags with the tent door open chatting, sipping whiskey from my hipflask and just drinking in the glory of the night. 

View from the tent

Next morning      (photo: H. Woodland)

 The night was less glorious when we were trying to sleep and our noses were too cold to stick out of the bags (we discovered later that it was a balmy -10°C that night). We awoke to a less glorious morning but we packed up and after another wander up to Disco Point to see if the two females had popped yet (they had disappeared, obviously the males advances were a little too amorous for them) we returned to base. On the way back we noticed a fairly large amount of blood soaked into the snow. We thought it might have been from males that had had a fight but upon closer inspection I noticed black fur among the blood so we looked harder and behind a female Hazel spotted the first Ellie pup of the year. He was so sweet. They are covered in longish black fur and are a sack of bones to begin with. They then suckle the unbelievably rich milk and fill out almost before one’s eyes. They have an imperious, barking call and hearing mum and pup chat is a real experience.

Warning: this next paragraph is detailed in its description of an Ellie seal birth; if squeamish move onto the next paragraph. 

After that the weather clagged back in but today (Sunday) it cleared enough that we decided to go out on a pup hunt. Hazel, Jo and I headed round the beach to Penguin River and kept our eyes peeled for any pups. At Susa Point, right opposite the base, Hazel’s trained medical eye spotted an uncomfortable looking female. We went up to have a look and sure enough under her back flippers were another smaller pair peeking out. We backed off a little bit and waited. It took a while. The mother had to shoo away a couple of skuas (large seabirds) that were a little too close. She would give a push and a bit more of the back would appear then it seemed to be sucked back in. We had almost given up hope that she would birth before we got too cold to stay standing around when she gave a final roar and a push and out slithered this wet bundle of fur that lay very still on the snow. We looked at each other while it lay very still and unmoving. Just as we began to be really worried it gave a little cough, rolled over and gave an imperious bark demanding milk. We all beamed and watched as an obviously quite tired mother nuzzled it. After a little while the placenta came out and then there was a slightly gory tug of war between a skua tugging on the placenta and eating it and the pup still attached to it by the umbilical cord. This is entirely normal and no damage is caused, it actually helps the umbilical cord to detach.

First pup      (photo: H. Woodland)

 

Just look at those little whiskers!

Ellie family

There were other pups lying around, all less than four days old and all calling to their mums or snoring softly in a milk induced sleep. It was quite a wrench stopping myself from taking one back to base to keep in the hypothermia bath. I am sure that Nido (the powdered milk we use) mixed with Glen Delight (‘cream’ that has never seen a cow) would be a fine meal for a growing pup.

Soon the beach in front of the base will become a real nursery and fighting ground and I for one am looking forward to it enormously.

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.