So picture of a cupboard! Basically the FPV needed to do a stoaway exercise and I was asked to hide so the guys aboard could try and find me. They didn’t despite opening the cupboard door.

Tom’s cupboard was full of camping gear so I jumped into his sleeping bag and put myself under the bags etc. The guys opened the door twice and the second time actually patted me on the head. I had to stop myself from giggling.

Me inside the sleeping bag! Stuart the 2nd mate had to come and yell that it was time to come out and I had to get him to open up the door to let me out! The day went downhill after that with more report writing!

After work it was time to climb Duse and rush down in time for my last cruise ship dinner aboard Plancius.

No one else was into going out on Sunday as it was raining and blowing however, Ali was heading over to Maiviken for work so I tagged along.

It was raining and a bit blowy but great to see the chicks at the gentoo colony and the beach full of furry pups.

We have Adrian Fox at base he came in on the Plancius on Thursday to map the Busen and Barff Peninsulas. Adrian is head of MAGIC which is the mapping division of BAS. Basically he is ground truthing the aerial photos that were taken by a military helicopter. The way he does this is to find easily reconizable featuers on the photos and then we take him there by boat.

At each site he sets up a tripod with a GPS which looks at 12 satellites over an hour. It logs the positions and after this is inputted into a program the position given is accurate to within 5cm. Normal handheld GPS’s are accurate to within 5-10m.

Friday and Saturday we boated for about 5 hours and then 9 hours. Today (Saturday) we went on an extended trip to Stromness Bay.

The wind was around 25 knots in the morning outside Cumberland Bay and it built to 40 knots in the afternoon. We were lucky enough to be going downwind coming home in 2 meter swells.

The beaches were very furry and after two seal bit incidents in the last 3 weeks everyone is a little bit less cocky around the furries. I only went ashore at Husvik as we were at anchor where as the other two sites this afternoon were not anchorable coves so instead we drifted with the engines off to save fuel.

Last night after a long day where we got back at 6pm I was on cook so I made a choice of steak and chips, beer battered fish and chips and toothfish fillets with cajun seasoning grilled and a clarified butter and lemon sauce on with bell pepper sticky rice. A dessert of lemon tart. It was a bit of a rush to get it ready for a 30 minute late dinner time of 7:30.

We then went out on a night trawl for the benthic science program just off base so didn’t get finished till past 11pm by the time the boats were away. We were up and working at 7am as we needed to finish getting the boats ready for the trip to Stromness.

Tomorrow is a day off and I hope to get to the last peak on the Thatcher if I can persuade someone to go with me. Tommy is off with Kalinka and Katie at Harpon and Rob has gone for four days to Fortuna to help with the rat catching OTEP work.

I spent the morning helping Sarah out at the museum emptying all the cupboards over there of excess outdoor equipment much of which is very outdated being from the early 80’s.

It seems such a shame to be throwing out all the military snowshoes and skis. In fact I am bringing a set of each home as I can’t bare to see them be thrown in the tip. Maybe when I have a house they will look good above the fireplace. When the military garrison left it seems they left behind a full set of skis and snowshoes. Sarah kept a certain amount of military gear as it will soon be considered artefacts for in the museum.

I was able to snag a hard ski transport case which will be useful to get my skis home in one piece and also a few other bits and bobs including some arctic warefare tent booties which after a wash will be perfect to keep my toes warm up Aconcaqua.

Yet another stunning morning giving way to rain in the afternoon. I am trying to savour as much of my time left on this amazing island.

After a delicious dinner on Wednesday at Carse House I spent Thursday working on cupboards, spreadsheets, reports and then was invited with rest of base aboard Bremen for dinner. I finished work at 5pm and headed up Duse taking 6 minutes off my time from the beginning of the week. Just enough time to jump in the shower and rush down to the wharf to go aboard.

I didn’t know it was such a fancy ship so I had not really fully dressed for the occasion. We were seated on two tables with two expedition leaders on our table and as the menus were in German we had some interesting translations. One was water with cows swimming in it! – beef broth soup in english! Seven courses later it was time to jump off the ship and head home.

I have changed to a new daily program. AM 3.75km run, lunch time lifting weights and now the load carry of 33.5kg (73.7lbs) up the side of Duse after work.

Picture showing the scree slope I am going up in the evenings!

Today it was raining and I arrived back just in time for dinner soaking wet. Needless to say this meant the scree was very slippery and I fell twice on the way down even with walking poles. however, I cut 2 minutes off my time from yesterday so it is now taking 1 hour 4 minutes to get to the plateau at the bottom of the gully and back.

I load my rucksack up with water so that when I get to the top I can empty it out and only go back down with 10kg. This is to save my knees from the impact damage.

I am quite pleased as I get done with this and don’t feel like I did anything so I am hoping this is a sign that all my training has paid off. Now the unknown is how I deal at altitude.

I was lucky to be invited to Carse House for a delightful dinner and evening. I will miss hanging out with Pat and Sarah they really are a great couple with a long history in South Georgia.

John the Dr stopped for a few hours sorting out the food store and donned his surgical top to be my dentist. BAS gave him three weeks training as a dentist and he did a wonderful job of cleaning my teeth and lecturing me about brushing to hard. So I will make a concerted effort to change the way I brush – I wonder how long that will last!

The dense fog in the morning cleared to give us stunning weather in the afternoon.

Tuesday was busy with lots of maintenance to be done. So I got stuck into servicing the lifejackets which means inflating them, checking the lights and whistles and measuring the weight of the cylinders etc. We do the service every 6 months.

Today despite the mist we decided it was a good day to head out to Stenhouse which is a peak I have wanted to climb since we got here. Only one more to go in the travel area before I have summitted all of them! Les, James, Kalinka, Rob and myself had a great walk and were given some glimpses of the wonderful view a few bits at a time. Not a hard peak to climb even though initially it looked like it was going to be.

The gully on the way down was mud/scree on a large slab which made for a fast ascent if you were not careful. As I was the last in line there was pretty much a slick surface to make my way down!

Back in time for a sauna, some buttermilk biscuits (which I was craving for some reason), a haircut and still enough time to clean my room before dinner and a movie. Only one weekend left 🙁 my departure is coming quickly. Hopefully before I leave I will get to put up the christmas ornaments at the church and make my gingerbread house to leave on base for everyone to smash on christmas day.

Hope you all had a great weekend.

I realised I had forgotten to post a picture of Tommy and I’s new roof at St Andrews and also us two at the end of a long wet day of reroofing.

This morning I had a very long conversation with my mother about our February travels in Peru that we are planning. A few more hours on the spreadsheet and then time for a walk around to Penguin River as I hadn’t been over there for a while and wanted to check out all the furry harems along the beach.

Two new furry pups napping in the sun.

Two weaners lounging in the tussock.

The beach was cluttered with pups and their mothers guarded jealously by lots of large males. In fact it was quite a spicy walk along the beach but well worth it. I diverted up into the tussock every now and again to get around a more protective male and had to jump from tussock mound to mound avoiding the smelly wet muddy elly wallows and the weaners.

Also had to be careful not to run into the lone pups who are hidden up off the beach in the tussock waiting for their mothers to come back from a four to five day fishing trip.

It was Katie Whale’s (so called as she is Katie that works at the whaling station as opposed to Katie who is the fisheries biologist and is called Katie Fish) birthday today and she wanted to have a BBQ and the party in one of the old blubber tanks.

There is one with a large hole cut in the side and the roof has been removed. It is a cool venue especially when Tommy takes the generator over and puts up the coloured lighting.

The candles were forgotten for the birthday girls cake so I jumped on the bike and headed back to base to get some. The sun was just setting and there were some beautiful clouds over base.

The South Georgia Mechs way of lighting candles!

I had the pleasant surprise of remembering that I had forgotton to put my advent calender that mum sent down out and therefore got to eat three days of chocolate.