In my continued attempt to sort out the field store equipment I emptied all the pockets off the jackets and put them in the laundry. This is the pile of pocket contents not too bad though I am not really into cigarette butts etc. We have industrial machines in bio security which do a great job of all the equipment.

Refuelled the jet boats so moisture wouldn’t build up in the fuel tank then took Alert out for a spin to test her engines now the transom rebuild is finished. After that it was lunch time and I had to retire to bed feeling ill. There is a virus going around base and I got it 🙁

The dawn was stunning this morning. Tommy borrowed my camera and took this shot through the water jug.

I was on cook and as we had ricotta cheese that came in as a treat I decided to make spinach ricotta and chicken encilades with spanish rice, refried beans, salsa and raw vegetables. The boys except Ali liked the spicy encilade sauce.

Dessert of fruit salad with lemoncillo cookies – the lemoncillo was the stuff that Maureen homemade for midwinter. For snacks I made bananna, nut and oatmeal cookies.

As there were quite a few aubergines going off I made a pasta sauce from them before they became mouldy for Rob to use tomorrow night.

As the courgettes were also going rather limp I made a pie which originally didn’t seem to go down well with the guys but Rob and Ali decided it was OK.

Meanwhile as I was on comms and it was my maintenance week Matt Boat took the boating duties of which there was quite a lot today with two reefers in the bay and transhipments from Saga Sea and Fukei Maru.

Tommy was very artistic with his bread this morning – a king penguin with an egg.

Matt Boat said the snow on the window looked like we had gone crazy with the christmas fake snow in a spray can!

The pressure dropped quickly to 975MB yesterday resulting in winds gusting to 70 knots and an average around 45 knots. Combined with snow which was blowing horizontal the visibility was quite poor. The fishing boats and reefers who had come into the bay to tranship started dragging anchor and headed out back to sea to stay away from the rocks. Needless to say we didn’t do any outside jobs 🙂 despite the Saga Sea saying they were going to deploy their pilot ladder ready for us to clear them in!! Pat decided that trying to climb a horizontal pilot ladder was a bad idea even if he could have persuaded the boating department to leave the heated office!

The red system to the ENE of us is what we experienced yesterday..

This morning we are above 1000MB but it is slowly going down again and the wind has been picking up all morning. Unfortunately we have rain today which is washing away the snow. So much for going for a skin at lunch – I will be back in the gym on the hiking bench today.

Boat school today was estimated positions, dead reckoning, leeway, course to steer and estimated time arrival. Tommy left with a headache!

Saga Sea and Frio are back in awaiting La Manche and Fukei Maru so it will be a busy day in the boating department tomorrow.

Between trips out to the two reefers – Shanghai Reefer and Frio Olympic I did a gym session, a run and a bike session. On the run I ran past a small lepoard seal hauled out on the beach which was well photographed by Matt, Sam and Ali.

Tommy drove the jet boat and did a grand job.

This is Robert on the pilot ladder of the reefer waiting for a pick up.

Meanwhile Sam and Matt Mech cooked up a storm. With Sam opening up the KEP bakery I had to keep going to do exercise to burn off the donuts and bacon slices. I have set up a hiking bench for simulating hiking out on a dinghy which provides a great ab workout and a block hanging off the I beam with a rope and weight to simulate pulling a sail up the mast.

Tomorrow there is probably going to be two ships in and Pat and Sarah return to the island after their 4 month holidays. The weekends don’t seem to have been uninterrupted for quite a while which is good for South Georgia with the fishing licenses provide a large portion of the government budget.

On the topic of the outside world I have to brag a little and congratulate. My little (24 year old) brother competing in his first solo race crossed the line first and decimated the competition on corrected time after an 80+mile race from Lymington in the UK to St Peter Port in the Channel Islands. He is competing in a week long singlehanded regatta. Also another win by the Hubbards (friends and clients of mine) with whom I have raced across the Atlantic and Newport Bermuda with. They were competing in the Transatlantic Race from Newport to the Lizard and corrected out first in class. I wish I had been able to do the race with them.

The blubber cookery where oil was extracted from the whale blubber after being stripped off in large sheets. These sheets were winched onto the blubber plan in front of the cookery where they were cut into smaller strips and fed into a small hole in the wall at found level.

This was the entrance to a rotating cutter driven by a steam or electric motor.

This cutter minced the blubber into smaller slices which were picked up by a bucket conveyer and transported upwards into the cookers.

Each cooker (12 cookers in total) held 25 tons the blubber was boiled by piping in steam. The oil then went to a seperator plant to for further purification.

This morning there was sheet ice where the puddles were yesterday after a chilly night. Between repairs on our tents I did four trips out to a krill boat and reefer vessels with the government officer Robert and Andy Black. Sam went on as witness in the morning to the Korean krill vessel.

When this tent was in strong winds the tent poles broke and punctured the pole ”channels”. So today I stitched them all up practicing my suturing knot tying technique from Doc School.

More tent damage to repair that would have ruined your holidays!

The ship is not a factory ship like the one I went on so the krill is just frozen into blocks and kept in a hold at -30C.

The age and therefore condition of the recent Korean and Japanese vessels is in stark contrast to the krill vessels from Norway. The reefer vessel was the Shanghai reefer that had sailed for the Falklands and then turned around to refuel the krill vessel.

Another beautiful blue sky by cold day allowed Sam, Tommy and myself to skin around to Grytviken past Wendy (the weddell seal!) who was hauled out on the snow.

I am on lates tonight but won’t need my torch as we have a beautiful full moon lighting up the mountains covered in snow. I have now finished the History of Britain so I need a new documentary series to bike to in the evenings. Looking forward to the returning sun so instead of working out on a gym machine I can take to the hills again but that won’t be for at least another month.

Wendy the Weddell seal who has been hanging around the track the last few days was on the shoreline when Tommy and Sam skinned by to the hydro plant to do some maintenance check. Sam took the picture above. I didn’t want to wreck my skis as with all the rain it was slushy so instead I decided to run which meant I got a touch damp but it was a great work out!

I have been going through all the tents we have on base, setting them up labelling the flys, poles and inners so we don’t get into the field and have an issue. Also finding the damage and putting it to one side to repair.

I also made very simple changes to the snowsled pulk so the cascade stretcher is secured inside – removing the snow fins and cutting down a foam pad to protect a patient from the metal parts and pieces in the bottom of the stretcher.

Also added strong attachment points allowing us to belay a patient down very steep parts and hauling points. When we have more snow we will try it all again.

I finished the extension to the RIB transom as you can see the plates I made to stop the thumbscrews from indenting into the glass are installed with the fuel filters. Now it is Matt Boats job to put the engines back on as it is his maintenance week and he is the outboard engine maestro.

We had a great Doc school with a scenario of a tourist having a heart attack and also one having an asthma attack. As I was on earlies I made a roast pork dinner with yorkshire puds etc.

As the maintenance was under control and there was no krill boating today Rob and I took 2 hours extra for lunch and went for a walk along Brown Mountain plateau and back along the beach. As per usual I ran along like a naughty child while Rob loped into the distance – apparently his sister complains as much as I do about his stride. This is a picture of us with the Greene Peninsula across the Morraine fjord and Zenker Ridge.

We dropped down to the beach and had a look at what remains of the military presence on the Thatcher. This gun is set up next to an observation hut which is falling apart.

The gun up close – 4.5 inch, 1918

Walking back along the beach the kelp was a frozen mass and we dodge a few male furries but like last week at Maiviken they are not very brave yet and two of them quickly took to the sea.

It became quite warm when we got back to base and as the sun went down the snow was avalanching off the roof tomorrow will be slushy I suspect.

Edit 7/16 – I was incorrect it wasn’t military. I found some more information about the gun in a book in our library. During WWII the Germans operated in the South Atlantic and Southern Ocean in the spring of 1941 they captured some of the Norwegian pelagic whaling fleet. As there were concerns about enemy action a gun was installed in the two stations still operating – Grytviken and Leith. The gun at KEP was originally installed up at Hope Point and then was moved around to Susa Point.

The cold snap has created a lot of pancake ice in the cove and snow on the jet boats. As Pipit had passed the 1000 hour mark we moved her to the inside and will use Prion until we get the parts in to do a full 1000 hour service on the engines. Matt has rebuilt two engine pre heaters on Pipit so they are likely to go on Prion soon.

As Sam (who took these pictures) mentioned this is the Antarctic version of defrosting ones car! There was so much snow on the boat she was quite low in the water. Also you get blinded by the snow when it flies off the roof into your face at the outside helm position.

The Antarctic Bay is being towed by the Betanzos back to the Falklands. Andy who was on the boat as the observer is now back on base with us enjoying cakes! Apparently they didn’t make puddings on the Antarctic Bay and that is the only reason he missed us 🙂

The Shanghi Reefer hadn’t been to South Georgia before so the inspection took longer than usual but the transhipment of krill from the Fucknu Maru (spelling) was very quick and they were motoring out of the bay by midnight. The reefer was well covered in ice from sea spray. We did two trips one to take Andy and Robert out and at the same time did a bit of training towards the Nordenskol Glacier with Ali. The nunataks on the glacier were stunning in the sun light. We were back out as the sunset to pick them back up.

This is in view from where I went skiing today it is where the freezer was. I must admit to not skiing that well I felt like a complete beginner not being used to skiing on grass!! It means you can’t use you edges so doing a turn becomes a little harder.

The freezer area in Grytviken was installed in 1961/62 before that it was in Husvik however, it was never operational. It was installed in Husvik to store frozen meat for human consumption but the meat was never used for that instead it went to the UK to be turned into cat and dog food.

The plant contained four compressors/refridgeration machines but was mostly used for storage.