Today was busy I started at 7:15am as the tide was dropping and the jet boat needed to be in the water so as it was still dark the JCB lights were on. As Sam was in the gym on the treadmill I was able to get her to help me with pulling the jet boat out of the boatshed into a position where I could power wash it. The ice on the slipway hindered the boat from smoothly rolling down to the water so I had to power wash the build up of ice off the slipway! At 8:30 Matt arrived to help me finish putting Prion in the water and was able to experience his first time driving through sea ice. The ice on the cove was thick this morning as we have had -7C and no wind for the last 5 days so it is now about 3 inches thick.

Once the Prion was alongside it was time to help Matt Mech with refuelling station. We have a fuel store and a day (week) tank system which every monday gets filled from the store and it requires somoeone to sit and make sure nothing leaks! Tad boring and cold!

After refuelling it was time to get the RIBs warmed up for a trip to the Greene. They had had to sit outside overnight as the jetboat was in the shed so I warmed up the telltale tubes with a heat gun and we had to pour warm water over the instruments to even turn them on! The ice in the mic on the VHF didn’t thaw for quite a while. We started the engines on land using the muffs before launching them to get them good and warm.

It was almost a three hour trip out to the Morraine Fjord through sea ice, grease ice, pancake ice and brash ice. We saw two lepaord seals hauled out on the ice they were looking very fat and happy. This was the first experience for Alastair, Sam and Tommy to properly drive through ice – many pictures were taken and there were lots of smiles. We picked up the depoted equipment and the dead skua that we found while on holiday and they wanted to have a look at back in the lab.

After putting the boats away it was time for lunch and then replying to the many work emails since I had been on holiday since last thursday.

Sunset at 4:30pm today was stunning.

Tommy and I sorted out the camping equipment drying out of the tents, thermarests and washing our down jackets etc.

Time for a relax and bed!

Oh the big news is that we stormed passed the 6000km finish line doing a total of 6702km with Les (my boss) doing 1200km bike ride in the last two weeks. The second place team is still on the course having gone 4448km. So Race Antarctica is finished… now what will we all do on station!