Coming down the hill to Maiviken hut picture by Sarah Lurcock

Today was the half marathon which is 13 miles and as we live on a mountainous island involves 1500 feet of ascent, scree slopes, bogs, fur seals, elephant seals, tussock and burnap (prickly seed that sticks to everything). The course is base behind the football pitch up to Gull Lake across the dam up to the summit of Brown Mountain along the ridge down the other side of the mountain back to the fuel farm at base then out to Maiviken hut and back.

I dragged myself out of bed with a fever and against the Drs advice took to the start line. I wrunkled (basically run with some walking) and completed the course in 2 hours 46 minutes. I think I might have been able to do it about 15 or 20 minutes faster had I been well. When Claire comes through from Rothera maybe we will re do it with the Dr and Rob. Sams broken foot is still not healed enough and Rob was smarter than myself and stayed at base feeling ill. Time to sleep before my parents arrive on base tomorrow for their short visit.

Alastair was the first winterer to finish being preceeded by Hugh who was only 17 seconds off the course record, Lee (a singlehanded sailor who is tied up across the way at the moment) and Theis. Hugh, Lee and Theis are all over the age of 40! Shame on the young ones 🙂

Another busy day at KEP for boating. By 10:00am we had had all four boats on the water. A pick up of hut workers at Sorling followed by checking the rat boxes on the Greene after a swap from jet boat to RIB. There were 4 rats so we only have 10 more to go from that peninsula. While a team of four of us did this Matt Kenney and Rob took the Dr and Kieron out to a large fishing reefer. The reefer had steamed here from 480 miles to the NE with a potential case of malaria aboard wanting our Dr to check the patient. The crew were Russian and Sam said their chart keeping with the crews vitals were better than some she has seen done by NHS nurses!

After this flurry of activity I ended up in bed for the rest of the afternoon as I have come down with the virus that is going around base. A general feeling of lethargy and a mild fever.

The wednesday night ‘movie’ was Thies and Kicki (who are back from a month in the North of the island) slideshow of the last 20 years of cruising all over the world. They have some stunning pictures and experiences to share. Unforutnately they will be leaving us after spending two years in South Georgia at the end of the month. It will be quite a loss to the KEP residents when they leave us.

Wanderer III was made famous by Eric & Susan Hiscock during two cicumnavigations in the 1950’s. In their book, ‘Around the World in Wanderer III’ the couple set out from Yarmouth, England(1952) and circle the globe by way of the West Indies, the Panama Canal, Tahiti, Samoa, Fiji, New Zealand,Australia, South Africa, the Ascension Islands and the Azores, returning home three years later. Wanderer III has completed five circumnavigations and is sailed by Thies and Kicki Matzen. The designer was Jack Giles and she was built by William King in 1952. The keel and deadwood are elm, the stem, sternpost, frames, carlines and deckbeams are English oak. Iroko planking with cedar decks and a mahogany interior. She is sailed everywhere as the engine is hard pushed to do much pulling 7.2 tons and they only carry 20l of fuel. Her LOA is 30 feet with a beam of 8 foot 5 inches.

Yesterday was a very busy first day back at work after holidays. We started at 8am with a quick RIB trip over to the Greene to check the rat boxes and rebait them. The wind was at the upper end of our limit so the beach landing was a little exciting. There was one rat to bring home with us so we have now caught 6 over there (14 to go). Then as we were exiting the fjord on the horizon we saw the Sill (fishing boat) that had our beaker (Katie) and another BAS beaker aboard. We dropped off the RIBs and jumped on the jet boats and went out to pick up 30 boxes of cargo, drop off Rob and Kieron to check the dimensions of a net (there are strict net size controls in the fisheries), pick up Sue and Katie and transfer everyone back ashore.

Next job was to quickly have lunch and walk 7km to Maiviken to catch 100 seal pups and weigh them as it was the 7th of the month. Some are now very large I think 16kg was the biggest, they are bitey and fast. We were all pretty knackered by the end of it. We then had a missing person (one of the museum staff) so we split into two groups of three. One group went and checked the 10 rat boxes on the beach at the other end of Maiviken and we went to the other end and then all 6 of us walked up the valley to the hut yelling the persons name. This wasn’t an exercise and it all went well with us finding the person at the hut without a radio. So by the time we got home it was 7pm and time for dinner and for me bed.

This morning I was on earlier so was up at 5:45am in time to see a beautiful sunrise. A day of maintenance on the boats, paperwork and cooking. I made a slow roast pork leg joint, roast potatoes, brocolli, onion gravy, roasted mixed veg, sausages, crackling and stuffing. Followed by steamed treacle sponge and custard.

Oh I forgot to mention the beautiful chocolate cupcakes that awaited me with candles made by Alastair and Sam yesterday morning. They were not only good loooking but extremely tasty for eggless cupcakes!

I got back on Sunday night from 5 day holiday on the Barff Peninsula which is across Cumberland East Bay from base. We were dropped off by boat at Sorling which is a cove with a little hut right near the Nordenskjold Glacier. After a 6 hour hike with 28kg (61.6 lb) rucksacks on our backs we arrived at St Andrews Bay.

The hut at St Andrews

It is a 14km hike via Hound Bay so there is quite a lot of height gain and loss involved. It was a very low cloud, misty day with reindeer appearing out of the gloom making it feel like walking in Scotland. We walked past some giant pretrel nests and Hound Bay was teeming with fur seal pups like at Maiviken. The last bit down into the Bay is very steep and my knees felt it! Large pieces of scree which were quite slippy underfoot.

The next day (Thursday) was my birthday it was a stunning hot sunny day with bright blue skies. We got kitted up in waders and headed out to spend a day at the colonies. The waders leaked but it made no difference as being in amoungst 150,000 penguins more than made up for it. There were elephant seals, fur seals, penguins, skuas, giant petrels, reindeer, sheathbills. There were many different sounds – the penguin chicks ‘whistled’ and the adults had a harsher sound to them which as Rob said – ‘how do they have so much to talk about!. There was signs of new life and death scattered over the beach with penguin carcasses, adults sitting on eggs and chicks molting their brown baby fluff away to adult black, white and orange feathers. We went over to Clark Point and climbed up a outcrop surrounded by wave cut platforms and topped with dense tussock grass.

We sat in tussock chairs and admired the view before heading back for skeds. Rob cooked me a 3 course ration pack meal and we sat up talking for quite a while.

Thursday night a front came in and it was raining and blowing at dawn it had not changed so it was a morning of sleep for Rob (till lunch) and reading a book for me. In the afternoon it was still drizzling a bit but we went out for a walk up towards the Heaney Glacier and explored the fringes of sadly receding glacier. Under ice streams bubble up like springs at the end of it creating a flood plain with many little islands which the penguins gathered around. The sides of the glacier were covered in scree with ice arches and caves.

On saturday it was a hot beautifully sunny day so again we wondered over to the colony and Clark Point. We sunbathed on the point and watched a shag and some sheathbills who were very curious about us. After lunch we loaded our large packs back on and hike up through St Andrews Col and over to Hound Bay. It was a hot day for it taking us 2 hours to get to the Col where we were happy for the relief of mostly downhill to Hound Bay.

That night we camped on the edge of the Bay up the hill slightly with a view of Cape Vakop.

Sunday morning was a 6:30am start with a quick breakfast before hustling in dense mist/cloud over to Sorling Hut for a 10am pick up before the wind and swell picked up making it impossible to safely get the RIB to us. We witnessed a large section of the Glacier break away adding to the swell.

So a relatively relaxing time across the Bay with amazing wildlife watching experiences. A great way to spend my 33rd birthday!

My image upload tool is broken on the blog so I can’t show you pictures of monday and tuesday work.

Basically monday involved attempting to fix an old repair on the RIB which didn’t work so it now deflates quickly. More successfully in the afternoon we moved all the emergency supplies from disco house to the old jail (which has be refurbished). The emergency supplies are what we need if a cruise ship is abandonned and we end up with 500+ people on station.

Today (tuesday) we went to the Greene Peninsula to check the rat traps and rebait them and then took a little ‘jolly’ in the rain down the morraine fjord to the Harker Glacier. We had a bit of ice driving near the Glacier which was good fun – like Rothera boating. I then had to write the month report and more emergency supply moving.

This evening I packed my bag to go on holidays tomorrow so I will be offline till the 7th. Have a great week.