After four attempts the RAF finally flew over tonight and dropped a package in the bay. The ETA was between 7-8pm and as I was on cook I moved dinner to 6:00pm. Well at 6:20pm when I was putting a bite of food in my mouth we got a call that the plane was in the area.

So we headed out to the boats Alert (RIB) and Prion (Jet Boat) and sat off Hope Point until we saw them in coming towards us from the entrance to Cumberland Bay. We set off two orange bouyant smoke flares and they did a test run before circling back around for the real run.

Again we set off another two flares and moved away from the drop zone. They pushed a package of food out of the plane with a parachute attached and it gracefully floated to the water.

Matt on the RIB went in to collect it while we picked up packaging material that had come off on the Jet Boat. So an eventful evening at KEP.

Dinner was a little cold when we got back but that is what a microwave is for! I made grilled salmon on a bed of crispy noodles garnished with slivers of scallions and ginger. The sauce that I marinaded the salmon in was balsamic vinegar, honey, oil, chilli powder and flakes, ginger and garlic. Side dishes of stir fry veg, broccoli, rice and prawn crackers. For dessert I made baked cheese cake with piped cream and blackberries. For smoko I made some bananna nut muffins and lunch was phyllo pastry pie with spinach, feta and onions inside (spinoka).

The sunset was beautiful with oranges and reds lighting up the venticular clouds. The refuelling plane and Fat Albert did two more fly bys it looked like they were enjoying themselves up there. The view of the island must have been incredible.

As I type this the musical guys are playing their guitars and piano in Screen 2. It is summer at KEP!

Oh last night we watched Frozen Planet series 2. It really is very well filmed. We were laughing about how we had leaned out of our office windows earlier in the day to watch live a elephant seal fight like the one shown on the TV later!

On Sunday afternoon the JCR arrived and we went straight into relief starting with loading a years supply of food into the food store. We stopped at 7:30pm to get ready for a BBQ. Tommy and Matt did an excellent job of setting up and BBQing for 85 people as the full ships company ate ashore with us. Monday morning it was straight into the job of finishing the food store and opening up the boxes in the boatshed so we could put the packing materials back aboard the ship for recycling in the UK.

We are now up to 16 people on station and summer is in full swing. We have Kevin who I worked with at Rothera here looking at plants for a short period. Also our new BAS staff of James (new BC), John (new Dr.) and Erny (new Mech). We were busy in the boatshed today cleaning up from relief and booking the new stock in however, as much of our supplies did not make it aboard the ship we don’t have the maintenance to do that we were hoping to have done in the next two weeks. So I guess I will go on holiday 🙂