New landing site at Killenbeck (like tieing up to a wharf!)

Everyday down here you pinch yourself to make sure you are awake however, the last few days have been such beautiful weather that you really can’t believe you are being paid to be down here! The Dash finally got the new part for the landing gear with the Twin Otter coming in from Punta and 14 people left this morning with 14 new scientists coming in tomorrow. In the meantime my Friday was a pretty great day culminating with sitting on the roof of the snowcat at the skiway on cushions in the sun reading a book looking out over an amazing vista.

I had a really great dive off of cheshire to replace the logger and we then did a little drift dive after the quick job. The seabed was covered in anemone that were feeding and it looked like a carpet of flowers in a meadow. At our safety stop there was a carpet of green algae that looked beautiful in the sunlight and made me think of grass.

On wednesday Danny (the other boatman) and I went over to Killenbeck and island to the east of the station that people rarely visit to do a survey. Everyone kept on saying it was heavily reefed and hard to get to but we have now ID’d a really easy place to land and a very easy way of getting there. Yesterday after the engines had been serviced I did a test run over there with James (Field Assistant), Nicola (new chef), St. David and Caroline (Halley Base Commander). The cove that we tied up in looked so inviting in the sun.

After the afternoon dive we did some boat training for new crew during scrub out and then packed the boating up in time for dinner. After dinner a group of us took the snow cat up to Vals and I did a few runs down hill but it was a bit icy and then a short distance on the cross country skis. After that I retired to the cushion on the snowcat roof to read a book – this really is the life!

Unfortunately I am on SAR for the third weekend in a row but I am doing it so that I get two weekends off in a row and hopefully can get to summit Leonie and stay in the hut at Lagoon one of those weekends.