Fog rainbow by Sam when it started to clear

Today started with pea soup fog as far as you could see and indeed as far as we boated (to the Nordenskol ice face). The busiest day of boating so far for Matt and I and I didn’t do the evening/night runs as Matt is duty boat this week.

We started with a run to the Greene Peninsula we launched both RIBs but then after having problems with one engine we decided to go with the jet boat. That was helpful in the bad vis as Matt stayed .2 nm off the coast using the radar and I followed behind in the RIB. The first stop was on the East side and visibility got down to about 100 feet at times and there was a bit of brash ice 2.5 miles from the the glacier ice cliff.

Two screen shots of my new GoPro that was mounted on my helmet. Thanks guys 🙂

We dropped off 2 people on a nice beach about 1/4 mile off the glacier and then back tracked to the Morraine Fjord where the jet boat held station while I went in on the RIB following our tracks on the GPS. On the way back I ran into a large piece of ice kicked up by the jet boats wake luckily it caused no damage as the engines were on tilt (I leave them on tilt in ice however, you can’t go in reverse quickly…) so it just kicked the lower leg up and out of the way. The swell was running and waves were breaking on the morraine at the entrance. The plan initially was to drop two off at the hut area and two further down towards the Harker however as the vis was so bad and I hadn’t done a landing on the south west side of the Greene it was a quicker and safer option to have them all walk from the hut area.

We got back to base and Matt and I set to working on the engines – me on the spare one which was easy as I was just putting on new parts and Matt on the one that wouldn’t work. Also the battery wasn’t holding a charge so I put it on charge for a few hours before the next trip.

Fog lifting quickly with the RIBs at the wharf ready for another Greene run.

As the visibility started to clear before the 4pm pick up the helicopters wanted to fly so we were sent out to pick up 4 people back off the Greene. Back from that we did some small jobs and then out again at 4:30 to pick up two more people from the Greene.

The RIBs were put away and an hour and half later Prion (the jet boat) was out again to take the government officers out to our first fishing boat of the season. The fishing boats come into the bay for inspection and to receive their license before they are allowed to fish South Georgia waters. Two hours later Matt and crew were out picking up Kieron and Robert.

The last trip of the day was to pick Katie up off the ship after her trawl at 9:30pm. As this was a night operation a crew of 3 total were needed however, it seemed everyone wanted to go for a boat so 4 people jumped aboard with Matt while I covered comms on base.