As the bilges on Pipit were a little oily I forced myself to clean them out. They really should be totally clean so you can see when there is an oil leak. The water is a touch cold in the bilge between metal hulls and slush ice surrounding them!

The fendering on the wharf for ships is made of large truck/tractor tyres and is attached with chains. As you can see there was a chain on the outside of the tyre which meant it was marking up the side of ships when they were alongside. We rectified this situation as well as replacing some shackles which as you can see below were a little be worse for wear!

Matt wanted to take Dotty for a spin after sorting out the chains. Dotty is in the bottom left hand corner of the picture. She really is quite small!

While I was messing around with cleaning the bilges my cousin Natalie was getting married in Colorado Springs – Congrats Natalie wish I could have been there 🙂

I found a great book in the base library on shore whaling stations of South Georgia the other day. So over the next few months I thought I would take pictures of the buildings and explain what they were used for. I am posing in front of the Plating shop. It was part of the ship repair yard for repairing and building the cookers and boilers in the plant and for reparing the catcher boats. The machinery required for handling large iron and steel plates are now in the elements surrounded by the remained of the walls. Sheet metal roller, stamping machine, metal plating machine, metal cutter, metal drilling machine, a crane and travelling hoist. This shop also had welding facilities – cutting edge technology in the era of whaling at Grytviken.

This morning we picked up the happy holiday makers from Sorling. On the way back I was mean to Rob and put a piece of cardboard across the windscreen so he had to navigate using the radar and chartplotter. It is amazing how well the bergy bits show up on the radar. There was quite a bit of brash ice around even in the cove.

Everything is so still at the moment – last night with the full moon I did my lates without a torch it was that bright out. This morning there was a thin nilas crust on the cove which was broken up by the boats straight away. We have now turned the stop cocks to take engine cooling water out of the jet units as the slush ice was blocking the normal water intakes almost straight away.

After boating I finished off servicing one of the RIB trailers taking off the wheels and cleaning up the hubs etc.

MWP sign on Chippy Shop door – all over base at the moment!
Then I decided to sort out the workbench in the chippy shop. It has taken me since getting here to finally take action! The worktop only extended over the base by 1/2 an inch which meant you couldn’t clamp things in place on the top. I added 2 inches onto the work bench which required moving two vices etc. and there is now a large lip to clamp to. Sounds like a small project but it took me 3 hours as it is very well built.

Skins on the bottom of my skis
At lunch I skinned over to the hydro and tried to imagine what the cove looked like during whaling days. It is a hard thing to ‘see’ in your mind that this beautiful peaceful place was once full of noise, smoke and blood. Last night after watching avalanche training movies I watched a documentary called ‘The Cove’ about dolphin slaughtering in Japan. A very interesting film- it won an Academy Award in 2010.

We needed another hauling harness for our winter Search and Rescue Kit on base so everyone in our potential rescue team can haul either the medical kit or an injured person in the pulk. The harnesses are quite expensive and we wouldn’t get a new one until after the winter. Based on my hauling harness I made out of an old climbing harness I was asked to make another one for base. As would be expected my second attempt I think looks a little cleaner than my first one! I decided not to pad it as much as we are unlikely to use it in earnest.

After smoko (morning tea break!) Rob and I took Robert out to La Manche the krill fishing mother ship which has stayed at anchor off Hope Point to pick up the transshipment paperwork. Saga Sea the fishing boat left during the night having finished transferring their catch over to La Manche. Meanwhile another two krill boats are expected in this coming weekend to bunker fuel from La Manche and transfer their catch.

Over lunch time Tommy needed to do some servicing on the hyrdo electric bearings so we skinned over to Grytviken. I was slower as my ski boot was causing me some discomfort no idea why it was different from yesterday I am sure my ankle bones haven’t moved overnight! We got back in time for Doc School.

Sam’s presentation was on cold injuries and avalanche medecine. Very interesting stuff as there have been some changes in hypothermia medecine recently. We went from that to a presentation by Rob on weather as part of boat school. Rob was a meterologist for 2.5 years at Rothera so Matt suggested we have him do the weather presentation.

The lunar eclipse was meant to occur just after moonrise at 4:15 however, with the low cloud level the moon was obscured almost immediately.

After a quick 16km cycle on the bike at Carse and dinner we watched several presentations by the Canadian Avalanche center on terraine, probing, transcievers, rescue etc. So an afternoon and evening of learning.

Tuesday was a holiday in the Falklands but here we got on with work and Liberation day was celebrated with government gin and tonics on the veranda at 5:30pm. This day marks the end of the Falklands war in 1982.

I was on cook so decided to use some of the specialist flours etc I had brought with me from California. I made muffins with oat bran, wheat bran, apple sauce, oil, honey, bannannas and egg whites so quite healthy.

For dinner I decided to go with mexican so we had carna asada burritos with spanish rice and refried beans. As we don’t have any pinto beans I used some cans of 5 mexican bean salads to make the refried.

Seeing as we have a rather large amount of lemon curd I decided to make a dessert using lemon curd so made a lemon bar with crunchy topping and crust.

As it was a beautiful day Tommy and I went for a skin over to the Gull Lake track and did a run down. The snow was hard and fast still covering the scree. When I got back for some reason I decided the state of the pantry was in dire need of organisation so I spent the rest of the afternoon sorting through part used packages of lentils, polenta etc and re stacking cans etc. By the end I had a large pile of food that needed to be thrown out. Dried lamb granules with a 2003 expiry date isn’t too tempting!

Well not really but for South Georgia it was busy!

This morning was a busy start to the week. Ali, Katie and Matt headed off to Sorling on holiday after base meeting. We filled the RIB with the gear and I took the jet boat. The visibility was not great for most of the trip I used the radar and there were large sections of brash ice to work our way through as we got closer to the Nordenskol.

After dropping the happy campers off we headed to the ice cliffs of the Nordenskol to map the face using the radar. We were lucky and for a little while the fog lifted so we could actually see the glacier. We slowly moved along 1/4 mile off parrallel to the ice cliff and created a track with waypoints I will put this into the computer and before I leave in December will do the track again and we will see how much the glacier has receded.

After leaving the glacier we headed back to base as quickly as the conditions allowed as there was a krill boat transshipping to the factory ship in the bay and Robert needed to go aboard and give them a licence. When the brash cleared a bit the guys in the RIB had some fun catch some air off the jet boat wake!

Due to the fog which had now decreased visiblity to about 1/8 mile the fishing vessels were slowed down so there was time for lunch, weekly checks and a few more small jobs. Updated the waypoints on the RIBs and next weeks trailer checks including removing the wheel and cleaning the hubs etc. As we are on winter holiday next week with the main day being midwinter day – 21st we are getting all the jobs done so we come back to a clean slate.

Sunrise today was at 8:45am and sunset at 4:07pm so I am looking forward to the days getting longer after midwinter day.

In between the maintenance tasks we took Robert out to the ship off Hope Point luckily the visiblity cleared to about 1/2 mile so I didn’t have to creep to the ship at 4 knots so it was a quick trip out and back an hour and half later.

After a week and half out of action with my virus I decided to get back to exercising today and did an hour on the bike in front of a World at War. It was an interesting episode on the Death of Hitler and the controversy over whether he shot himself or killed himself with sionide (spelling?).

Sunday it rained all day here the snow fell off the roof and the ground snow turned to sludge. I decided to make another midwinter present and read a book a relaxing day all in all.This is my pitroom floor covered in materials for the second MWP. All around base people were busy working away like elves in their office or workshops busy making presents to be opened on our equivalent of christmas day – 21st June.

At 9:00am there was a knock on my door – Rob was outside dressed for skiing and wanted to know if I was coming. We had some great snow fall last week but it had warmed on Friday and it seemed to be melting quickly. I dragged myself out of bed however, and 5 of us took off towards the repeater on the Duse ridge with all the requisite avalanche gear.

I really shouldn’t have been out as I was still sick but how could I not! As the snow was Sierra cement in nature and it was threatening to rain I decided to stay with Ali and Sam on the first part of the plateau and try to teach Sam how to ski. She did a good job considering the snow conditions but in the end decided it was easier to walk down the hill. Ali also did a good job only coming to a halt when he hit a hidden rock – the contrast was poor. I am trying to relearn how to ski on my new skis which are very wide and also longer than I am use to.

When I told mum we went skinning she thought I had mispelt skiing but no skinning is when you put skins on the bottom of your skis so you can go uphill – as of course here we don’t have ski lifts.

Dinner was Saturday night at Carse house cooked by Ruth and Maureen. A splendid feast with delicious profitta rolls for dessert.

Ali and Sam are off on holidays to the Greene and it is a beautiful day for it. This picture was taken out of the bar windows. The icicles are getting longer and the snow deeper – lets hope it stays around.

Yesterday Tommy and I skinned up to Deadmans and then skied back down. I am now regretting it as I wasn’t fully better from being sick and it has put me back a day. We got back in time for Doc School on Altitude Medecine and then I worked till dinner as I had played for 3 hours over lunch in the snow!

Snowy sheathbill ‘footprint’ in the snow they are found all around the rocky shorelines as you can see from the print unlike true seabirds they don’t have webbed feet.

I took this at St Andrews hence all the penguins behind – they strut around waiting opportunistically for food! They are scavengers if we don’t remember to put the VHF mic away they will peck away the buttons and I have seen them attempt to peck the grease off the cable for hoisting the jet boats out.

”Sheathbills nest in rocky crevices in summer, usually near penguin colonies, where the scavenging is best and where they seem to have no fear. On occasion, they have been observed to disturb adult penguins to the point of successfully stealing food right from the mouths of feeding chicks. This is typically accomplished by the focal bird when it strategically displaces the chick before the parent finishes complete regurgitation. Food is dropped onto the ground and the result is a happy sheathbill and a hungry penguin chick.”