After taking Pat and Sarah over to the Greene for their holidays we enjoyed the glorious weather and went down to the glacier fronts.

Afterwards we headed to the wrecks at the morraine enterance their was no swell so we were able to get up really close to them.

After lunch Ali, Sam and I headed out for an ascent of Duse with ice axes and crampons. The picture above shows the route we took up the gully from the plateau to the summit.

There were snow petrels flying all around the summit they were quite inquisitive swooping around us. As we climbed you could see their shadows on the snow in front of us.

Once at the top the view was exceptional so Ali took pictures for a 360 interactive including the one above of myself.

The sunset was beautiful on the way back down the gully it set over the mountains casting a pink glow over the snowy summits. We got back in time for a quick shower before a tasty meal of Spanish tapas cooked by Katie. (Photo by Ali)

The weather on Friday was horrible there was no way we were taking Pat and Sarah on holiday. I checked in on the two RIBs we had outside when I went down to work in the shed. Both were doing fine head into the wind with their covers on. However, some 60 knot gusts came through and 30 minutes later Matt came down and looked at the RIBs – we had a situation.

Luckily there was little damage to the boat with the only damage being to the navigation light.

In a brief lull we got Tommy and Rob down and the JCB out and we were able to put the RIB upright on the snow. The wind picked up again though so we left the JCB pinning the RIB down, the trailer lashed down and the other RIB lashed to the row of containers.

In the next lull Matt and I lifted the boat on the strops and put her back on the trailer.

After the excitement I wrote an incident report for Cambridge HQ and asked for concrete blocks to be installed so we can tie the boats down in future. Report writing complete Matt and I went back to jet boat servicing and scrub out.

I finished off the job of restocking our pantry shelves ahead of first call so there will be room in the food store for all the new supplies at the beginning of November.

First thing this morning it was a stunning day.

I took off at 7am for a skin to the museum this is the view looking back at base.

The same scene at 10am the weather changes quick in SG at all times of the year.

The self righting bag looks like it has a case of the chicken pocks!

This morning when I awoke it was snowing lightly but the wind had calmed to nothing. We have been needing to take the jet boat out for servicing so Matt and I pounced on the opportunity. We cleaned the turbos (lots of smoke!) on the engine and a few small jobs while we waited for the tide to rise. After pulling her out we set to work straight away on servicing the self righting bag which like the other boat had lots of bubbles in the hypalon and unfortunately is also quite damp inside the tube. The anchor locker checks, engine ventilation system, annual jet unit servicing, normal 4 monthly jet unit servicing, repair of some damage to the hard sponsons – as usual the list of jobs on boats seems endless.

The day turned into one of the most beautiful SG days so far it seems spring is finally here. So taking the opportunity I jumped on my skis packed up my lunch and headed over to do a loop of Grytviken. I stopped for lunch and sat on the cementry fence next to Ernest Shackleton’s grave. What a stunning view he had today.

Back to the boatshed for more boat maintenance, the gym, dinner and a movie as it is wednesday night.

It wasn’t very nice weather on Monday but I really needed to get the 6 and 12 monthly engine services done so I wrapped up in the beautiful insulated orange boiler suits.

Cleaned foam filter for the turbo

We have to remove the covers off the heat exchangers as the penguin feathers clog them up and remove them with welding rod.

The lovely feathers that clog our engines up.

It takes an awful long time to get 10litres even pre warmed of oil out of each engine using a priming ball from the outboards! First call (November) we are getting a little 12V pump and it will make the job a lot quicker!

The snow tunnel is no longer – in the space of 34 hours the temperature went from -2 to +12C (53F). There are massive puddles all over and Ali’s snow hole has caved in.

The bummer is we didn’t even get to ski as the track was closed with avalanche risk and it went from snowing and cold to warm and wet overnight.

Sarah did a grand job of 70’s night with a seventies style buffet of coronation chicken and many salad type dishes. I didn’t feel that great so let the side down by not getting dressed up and went across to eat and then headed back to bed. It was a bit sobering when we realised that I was the only person on base born in the 70’s – made me feel old for sure – the rest of the BAS personell were all born in the 80’s.

However, everyone else got into the spirit of the event dressing to impress.

Robert the Government Officer

Tommy making use of his mohawk

Ali showing off his chest hair and wearing the ‘birthday shirt’. Apparently the shirt has been on base since the military were here. A marines mother sent the shirt as a joke for him to wear on his birthday and for many years after that whom ever’s birthday it was had to wear it.

Today lots of snow has melted as the temperature has been above freezing and we have large puddles and slushy snow all over the place. All the annual maintenance items are due this week according to our computer program called AMOS that is used on base to monitor stock and give us jobs to do everyday! As it is not possible to do all that in one week with snow shovelling, SAR exercises, earlies and training of the government officers it will have to spill over to the next few weeks. It just isn’t always possible to do work on the engines when the jet boats are outside and it is blowing 30 knots plus and snowing. Matt and I chipped away at some of them including the 12 monthly service which required us to clean the turbo’s on the engines.

The process results in lots of noise and smoke while Matt squirted cleaner in the air inlet then water and I was in charge of the revs. He also did the fuel and oil filter changes and checked zincs. When this is done we have a very specific part to service due to being in South Georgia. Penguin feathers make it through the fine seawater filters and into the coolers requiring removal with a welding rod!

I serviced the self righting cylinder and bag as you can see it is inflated on the aft deck. We leave it for a few hours to make sure it doesn’t deflate and holds pressure before repacking it.

Unfortunately the hypalon has got a case of teenage acne! The temperature is too low to fix this outside so we will have to wait until we slip the boat and have it inside in the warm and dry to repair.

Hope you have a great weekend. For us it will be one of doing some inside activities as we have a nasty low pressure system already over us that is meant to last through tuesday with lots of wind and precipitation. Saturday night will be a 70’s party in honour of Pat’s birthday at Carse House so everyone will be busy with fancy dress items tomorrow.

After snowing all day monday and tuesday there was a whole lot of snow to clear on wednesday. As you can see the walkway was so full you couldn’t walk down it. At first when I was shovelling the snow was sticking so after cleaning the blade off I sprayed it with silicone spray and that did the trick!

After a mammouth effort by everyone on base we had made a snow tunnel.

As the windows are fire exits they all had to be cleared as well so Tommy, Kate, Matt and myself waded through the snow which as you can see was waist high on Matt!

We all proceeded to shovel a lot of snow!

Just before lunch every door and window was cleared and the guys had even helped me remove all the snow from the jet boats. Normally it takes me all day on my own to do so I was pretty happy about that.

Ali’s snow hole has grown in size so 4 people can fit in it. This is him backing out of it!

On Monday at our 9am radio sched we called in a SAR exercise. Rob made me the casualty I was apparently skiing when I broken my leg just above my ski boot and had a head injury. He gave KEP comms our location and details and left it to everyone on base to then come and rescue me with the equipment which we have been making and testing over the last few months. I hasten to add I was not injured it was just an exercise. As the two boats were out at the time attempting to take Pat and Sarah on holidays they pretended not to have received the call until 10:30 when they got back. Meanwhile Rob Tommy and I finished making our breakfast then I did a little hut maintenance before we headed to Sorling Beach where we would be picked up. It was snowing lightly and the contrast was not great however, the boys went to the Ellerbeck Ridge where the skiing had been so good on Sunday and had a play. Meanwhile as I felt jinxed I sat with the bags and read my book. When we knew the SAR team was headed our way we skinned to the ‘accident site’ and pretended we had only day bags.

We proceeded to make a shelter with what we had in our bags. We dug into the snow making a level platform using the hill side as one wall, the two side walls we built up with snow and then using our avalanche poles and skis we made a roof. The skis were held up by the snow on the hill and ski poles at the front and then the skins were used to keep the bivy bag roof in place. Some large blocks of snow were used to fill in between the ski poles and viola we had a shelter.

We saved two ski poles to act as a splint on my leg and I sat in the shelter out of the falling snow in the relative warm with my book!

Eventually the team showed up hauling the medical pulk and casualty pulk. They remove the shelter from around me and then loaded me into the pulk attached to the spinal board. Then I was pulled back to the shoreline it was a very comfortable ride.

This is all the SAR kit in biosecurity building when we eventually made it back to base as you can see it looks like we are moving house! All in all it was a very successful SAR