With only seven on base earlies are coming up quickly so I had to come up with something to serve the masses. With Ali and Matt going out tomorrow we will be down to five. We were called out to the reefer in the bay with Dr. Sam for a consultation at smoko time.
Just before I pulled some pumpkin cookies out of the oven. Yes we still have pumpkin puree left!

This is the view from the jet boat window on the way back from the reefer. We took Sam and Pat out came back for a cup of tea (for Ali as I don’t partake in the British national drink) and a bit of cooking then back out to pick them up just before lunch.

I plated up dinner instead of putting it as self service. The menu was pork loin wrapped in bacon with a cider reduction (made with stock made from the pork cutoffs), jullianed (spelling?) carrots with cumin, lemon juice and butter, polenta biscuits with homemade tomotoe sauce, spinach and mozarella cheese and a baked apple with brown sugar and sage.

The snow was still around as it has stayed cold so at lunch I went for a skin around Grytviken and just before dinner squeezed in a trip to the gym.

It has been a day of white. White snow, white fog, white sheets of paperwork and white paint. I am still not feeling very well but forced myself after spending all morning doing paperwork to go for a hike. Mum collects and opens all my mail in the US from a friend who very kindly empties my PO Box. This means that once every few months I receive a very long email from my secretary (Mum) with problems to solve and bills to pay. This month was exceptional as there was a lot of junk mail so I spent a long while emailing companies telling them to stop sending me marketing material – time will tell if that worked! All boring I know. So onto the next white…

This is me at Deadmans normally the view behind me would be down cardiac hill to the Maiviken Lake and the beaches beyond. However, as you can see when I got to the col it was very limited visibility about 20 yards. I didn’t fancy ‘scree’ skiing which would have resulted in large scars on the base of my skis so skinned to the church then changed into my hiking boots.

The last white is the paint that I am putting on the present I have completed (except for the painting) for the person back at home all to be revealed in a few weeks time!

The sun is back on the very tip of the wharf and in front of the boatshed. It is so nice not to have to walk around to the base of Brown Mountain to get a few of the suns rays! What a stunning day in South Georgia. I spent the day in bed on Friday and Saturday morning.

When I finally got up Saturday it was such a beautiful sunny day I forced myself out in my down jacket to Gull Lake. I was jealous of the boys going to Spencer Peak over Maiviken but it would have been stupid to push myself up the hills like that. Gull Lake was exhausting enough! The water at the shoreline looked like silver thread with the sun reflecting off of it.

I stopped at the top of the waterfall for lunch and looked out over the cove to base.

Gull Lake is well frozen with snowdrifts hiding the shoreline.

When I got back to base I sat in a chair in the sun for two hours in front of the boatshed. I can’t believe how dark my hair has got normally it is bleached blond from the sun but with wearing a ski hat the whole time and their not being much sun it is not california style anymore 🙁

This is the main kitchen in the new barracks and mess building it served five messes. The mess held three long tables extending through the entire room sitting approximately 150. There were two smaller messes in the building also a senior tradesmen’s mess and the tradesmen’s mess. The kitchen had rows of large food stoves, work benches and appliances. The main dishwashing benches with rows of sinks were either in the kitchen or the mess itself.

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.