After the nativity play last night which is the best I have ever seen and mince pies and mulled wine the four of us headed up for some christmas eve skiing and vals. The snow was really beautiful for skiing but unfortunately with my stitches it was a no go for me.

Claire, Adam, Clive and I spent the night in the caboose and woke up to presents on christmas morning. The bookcase for Claire was too big to get up to the caboose so some elves put it in her room for when she got back in the morning.

Adam and Claire had to be at work by 9am so they left early Clive and I stayed till past midday we had to take down the pyramid tent and I wanted to make a snowman.

We had some visitors Ant and Simon came up and as Clive had the guitar we spent an hour just listening to three talented people and made our way down for brunch.

Phone calls and opening of gifts and before you know it it was time to set the tables for christmas dinner. I got some beautiful presents – Clive made a fruit bowl on the lathe, Claire made me a gingerbread house kit and lots of yummy things from home, Adam gave me a flight in the UK with him on the planes he flies and Matt Doc my secret santa dd a beautiful water color of a twin otter over Jenny Island framed. Wow I am a lucky person.

After too much food and chocolate it was time to watch some 007 in the form of Casino Royale and then bed time at 11pm as I had to be at work this morning.

Hope you had an amazing day with friends and family.

Love
Ash

The sea ice and brash is in Hanger Cove pushed against the runway right over the sediment plates that needed changing out. We also needed to do some collections. I picked up 50 urchins while Terri took pictures of the sediment panels and did some other collections. The north side of the runway is very different diving from south cove as there is much more scouring by icebergs so it is not as diverse in terms of species and what there is a lot deeper. There are lots of nemertean worms along with the urchins.

Looking out from the Caboose last night at the tents.

Tents dusted with snow this morning
The station this morning covered in snow.

Last night Adam kindly took me up to the caboose at Vals as I can’t drive a skidoo yet and I stayed at the cabin. It snowed all night and was really beautiful this morning with the light on the Bay. This morning the snow was a foot thick and with not a single track pristine as far as they eye could see.

The station has a sewing loft which is a great place to hide away and do projects if the weather is not good for boating. I spent the morning making fire extinguisher covers admitedly one and half handed as my stitches come out on christmas day.

The christmas present for Claire moved on a little further this weekend. I will try to get the back on tonight. I put a contrasting solid wood frame on the face of the plywood shelves. The table planer is really great here – I love the workshop with all the great tools laid out neating and organised.

It was my weekend for SAR but seeing as I can’t get into the boat with my hand like it is I spent Saturday afternoon and Sunday afternoon making cookies, lemon meringue pie and mince pies one handed! This isn’t a small task on base as there are 80 people to feed at the moment so that is 160 mince pies for two each…

It was a shame as it was such a beautiful weekend to be out skiing however, I had a little bit of a lie in on Sunday till 9:30am which was nice.

At the moment we have around 80 residents at Rothera Station. With the ship coming in two times in the last month, two Dash 7 flights and numerous field parties coming back in we have a constant turn over of people.

As you can see from the picture with in a 1km radius there is a boatshed, wharf, hanger, runway, apron, fuel farm, accomodation blocks, garage, electrictian, carpenters, docter, science lab, mountaineering equipment store, sewage treatment plant, library, laundry, gym, post office, shop, IT department, darkroom, sauna, music studio, bar, movie theatre… etc. So basically anything you might want or need.

The station sits on Adelaide Island to the west of the Antarctic Peninsula. Temperatures have risen to +7C in the summer and drop to -20C in the winter. In an average year gale force winds are recorded for 70 days with snow or sleet 200 days a year. It very very occasionally rains otherwise it is a very dry environment. Sunshine averages at 1100 hours per year.

After John Rothera and Peter Gibbs surveyed the point in 1957 working form the UK Horseshoe Island Base there was an attempt to establish a base in 1960/61. Due to sea ice this didn’t happen so a station was established at the southern tip of Adelaide which remained in use until 1977 when it was made into a Chilean Base.

In 1975 the skiway up at Vals was used by BAS aircraft and the first building was erected with four people overwintering in 1976. This building is now the joiners workshop. In 1977 Old Bramsfield was erected and it served as the main building until 2007/2008 when new Bramsfield was opened.

At the start of the 1990’s the gravel runway was built up to this point everything had come in by ship making stays at base a lot longer than currently! The runway enabled a direct air link to and from the Falklands and the Dash 7 was purchased for this purpose. Also the fuel farm and Biscoe Wharf was constructed allowing ships to moor at the station and easier unloading of relief.

The last sledge dogs were removed from base in 1993 in accordance with the Antarctic Treaty. They had been replaced by skidoos for a number of years – the dogs were for recreational trips. The last two teams were Admiral and Giants hence the naming of the two accomdation blocks. In 1996-97 the Bonner Lab and Giants were built. In 99/2001 Admirals was built which is where I live it is a really comfortable accomodation block with two beds per room every room is en suite and has a window.

There are a few things different about diving here at Rothera than the diving that people do normally. One has to do with the deep low pressure systems that spin around the bottom of the globe. At the moment we have quite a few lows coming through base. As I type it is almost midnight and the wind has built all day from 17 knots this morning up to 42 knots at the moment. The waves are sculpting the icebergs into something a sculpture would be proud of! Anyways back to diving!

The magic figure is 977mb – meaning that when the pressure gets to less than 977 we have a correction to add in to the tables in the same way that you would if you were altitude diving.

The other thing that is different is orcas and leopard seals. I have mentioned before about seal watch well if you see either orcas or leps you can’t dive for 4.5hours at least. Talking about Orcas the resident pod came back last week into Ryder Bay. There were about 10 of them including a large male. There was an all stations call on the VHF that they were down at the wharf. Being at the boatshed we are right there which made for excellent viewing.

We also wear full face masks with a seperate bail out bottle and have integrated comms to talk to people at the surface. They take a little getting use to but I can see that I am now spoilt and will not like going back to the half mask and reg set up that is normal!

When we dive one person does the science while the other is a support diver holding onto a broom stick handle in case we meet and inquisitive sea creature.

We also don’t fly for 48 hours after diving and we only dive for 3 days before we have an enforced day off.

Wednesday I had my 5th dive down south in hanger cove which is very different to south cove and cheshire where I have been diving – a result of iceberg scour.

I am being trained to be a dive supervisor as well so will start taking on that role soon so that my days can be even more varied!!!

So I put my hand between the engine and the boat when I was tilting it the other day and now have a hand with two little punctures and up in a sling. So life is a little bit more challenging. Only one stitch but it was painful as the numbing stuff didnt work so needless to say i went through the roof when the needle went in!

No trip to the field for me over christmas and restricted use for a least 7 days. Luckily it didn’t go through the tendon but I am antibiotics as it is near the tendon sheath. However, this morning I have tested my left hand and can still drive the crane and tractor and am doing seal watch and working on the computer.

Can’t finish my christmas presents in the wood shed unfortunately… so presents will be late for those down here.

Oh well!!

Happy holidays everyone

One of the harder things to get across to the scientists is that weather is a large factor in planning. Above is the information permanently on our computer screen. When there is a crosswind it flashes red so we are ready to scrabble for SAR requirements.

We use a program called Ensemble as well as having a full time Met Office Forecaster on station. It has 5 different models which tell you what to expect for the next 5 days.

Every morning at 7:45am the boatman is at the ops meeting to get the METARs and TAFs (Terminal Aerodrom Forecast) and also understand the Air SAR requirements for the day. The METARs look something like this…

EGAR 231000Z 06007KT 1000 -SN OVC015 MO1 MO2 Q974=
Translated that means
EGAR = station
23 = Date of issue
1000Z = Time in Zulu
060 = bearing in T
07KT = wind speed
1000 = horizontal distance visibility in meters
-SN = slight snow
OVC = type of cloud
015 = cloud height of 1500 feet
M01 = current temperature in C
M02 = dew point C
Q974 = sea level pressure MB

The TAFs look like this
EGAR24100Z 2412/2424 06013KT 5000 HZ BKN016 TEMPO 2412/2416 1200 SNBKN012 TEMPO 2412/24150300 SN BR BKN005 BECMG 2414/2417 09022G32KT 999 SCT025 BKN025=

So from that I get the forcast that was issued at 1000Z for rothera on 24th that covers 1200Z to 2400Z on the 24th of 060 degrees wind at 13 knots with a temporary change between 1200 and 1600 becoming 090 at 22 knots with gusts 32 knots.

We also have another lot of information on the screen this is plots showing us the historic trends in wind direction, speed, temperature etc.

On top of all this we have HORACE which is the met offices program with animated weather charts.