Random Writings

As I’m writing this, the Ernest Shackleton’s about 50 miles south of the Falkland Islands and we’re expecting to dock in Stanley tonight. The first part of our trip across the Drake Passage was (relatively) calm and so the ship’s made good speed. Yesterday, however, we had Force 7 winds and huge waves crashing over the bows – making the whole ship shudder and sending a lot of people (crew and Fids alike) to their bunks. It turns out that I don’t get seasick (although I feel a bit dodgy if I’ve been reading a book or sat in front of a computer for more than about half an hour) for which I’m profoundly grateful!

We sailed from Rothera yesterday morning, waving farewell to the winterers and leaving them to the mercy of the practical jokes we’d played on them! With glorious weather and calm seas we made our way into Margerite Bay, round the southern end of Adelaide Island and out into the Southern Ocean. At this point, the Ernest Shackleton’s legendary hydrodynamics began to produce the chaotic pitching and rolling for which the ship is infamous. Everyone took their Stugeron, and only a few people retired to their cabins. I found I was happier when watching the natual horizon, and headed up onto the Bridge. I found Vicky there already, and as the two of us looked out to the west we saw three whales blow several times in succession a few miles away. You can usually tell a whale’s species from the shape of its spout, and subsequent research revealed that these were most likely to have been the very large but now very rare blue whales – wow!

Through the porthole – a last view of Rothera

This morning we woke in the calmer waters of the Argentine Islands, where we were to drop of a small team to help sort out some faulty meteorological equipment at the Ukranian base, Vernadsky. This used to be a British base (initially called Argentine Islands but later known as Faraday) and we still have a good working relationship with the cash-strapped Ukranians and tend to bail them out from time to time.
Whilst the ship held her position behind the base, rumours circulated around the crew and Fids as to our intended route. The captain had initially said “no scenic route” – meaning that after leaving Vernadsky we’d go directly to the open sea and set a direct course for the Falklands. In fact, as it was a glorious day and the conditions were calm and largely ice-free, Captain Marshall treated us to a small detour through the utterly spectacular Lemaire Channel before cutting round Anvers Island (passing the American Palmer Station on the way). Lemaire is a narrow channel flanked by high rocky mountains, and in an area with an abundance of wildlife. Stood on the “monkey island” – the upper deck above the bridge – we saw Orcas, penguins and seals in the water, as well as more whales (we think they were humpbacks). Should you ever get the opportunity to take a tourist cruise down the Antarctic Peninsula, make sure it includes this route as it is stunning!

Now we’re back in open waters, with the ship’s motion making you feel like you’re on a slowed-down Waltzer ride at a fairground. We should be in Stanley harbour on Tuesday morning.

Pictures of the journey

On Saturday we had a hugely successful fancy dress night with a historical theme. Lots of people dressed up in a variety of intriguing costumes: cave-people, cowboys, Romans, crusaders, hippies and so on. Roger and Pete almost stole the show as Stonehenge (yes, they made a “henge” out of cardboard and danced around in it for a significant amount of the evening) until Kai appeared in a robot outfit made from plumbing spares!
With a certain inevitability, I came as Brunel…

…with a frock coat made my creative modification of a vicar’s cassock from the dressing-up box and a top hat made from corrugated cardboard and gaffer tape.

On Sunday we had a heavy fall of snow, which makes the base look pretty again.

This morning the Ernest Shackleton has arrived to take us home. I’ll be moving on board tomorrow night, although the ship will actually leave on Thursday morning.

This may well be the last post for a while – I’ll try and keep updated whilst I’m on the ship but as the Shackleton is famous for making people seasick then I may be indisposed…

Final photos in the snow- Lowri, Jade, Tom and (not leaving yet!) Roger

What’s happened since I last wrote? Folk Night – the traditional blend of talent and silliness that forms a kind of end-of-season revue – and the departure of two of the Twin Otters for their winter maintenance in Calgary. We also said farewell to one of pilots, David Leatherdale, who’s retiring after a long period of service with BAS. We said farewell to David in giant orange letters laid out on the apron as he flew past!

We also had a brief visit from Malcolm Wicks, who’s Minister for Science and MP for North Croydon. He came, looked around, gave a *lot* of media interviews over the phone and then went again. He did host quite an interesting Q&A on the value of Antarctic science, although it degenerated into a set of harsh questions and defensive answers on why the previous day his department had announced cuts in the Research Council’s budgets despite these being supposedly “ring-fenced”…

Anyway, we had a final week of flying, mostly in support of the MASIN airborne meterological study, and as part of this I got a morning’s co-pilot down to Fossil Bluff and back. It was mostly clear down King George Sound and I managed to get some nice photos of the ice formations and mountains – Alexander Island and its immediate environs certainly count as one of the finest sights I’ve seen.

Extensive crevassing in King George Sound

Not long after this we had a barbecue over at the Hangar to say farewell to the Air Unit, which somehow became blended with a volleyball tournament! I’m pleased to inform you that the Comms Team (consisting of myself, Crispin, Chris and Mark) made it all the way to the final only to be beaten by Morrison Construction!
The following morning the remaining two Twin Otters departed, followed by the Dash the following day, although the latter made one more trip to bring us the last air mail from Stanley and finally left for good on Wednesday, doing the by-now-traditional flypast of the Ops Tower (“Negative, Ghostrider, the pattern is full…)

Dash-7 flypast

One of the other things about leaving is that you suddenly realise that there are things you meant to do that you never quite got around to. So yesterday I went out with Roger and Alistair and went to explore the crevasse up near Reptile Ridge. It’s quite a strange experience – much more like caving than I was expecting – with chambers interconnected by small slippery passages and occasional shafts of diffuse light coming down through the snow bridges overhead. at one stage we heard a skidoo drive past overhead, which really brings it home to you how important it is to stay inside the safety of the flag lines.

Inside the crevasse

Next Sunday the Ernest Shackleton will be here and it will soon be over, bar the journey home. I should be back in the UK on or around June 5th, at Portland in Dorset, although this is still subject to change.

Antarctic tourism is getting to be more and more popular – and that means cruise ships. Further up the Peninsula (at Port Lockroy, for example) they can deal with two or three cruise ship visits a day. Here at Rothera we restrict ourselves to two ships a year, mostly because it’s a huge disruption to the work of the base to spend an afternoon showing tourists around.
Anyway, our first cruise ship of the season cancelled, and so our only visit was from the Hapag-Lloyd ship MS Bremen. The ship arrived on Monday afternoon and tied up at the wharf and I spent a pleasant afternoon showing the 150 passengers around the base. They all seemed to have enjoyed themselves, even though they were only on the base for two hours!

MS Bremen at the wharf

Tourists on the point
Later in the afternoon I got invited (together with a few colleagues) for dinner on board with the captain. We got a very brief tour of the ship as well. Unlike our ships, where the bridge is on the top of the superstructure and has the best view, on the Bremen the prime space is given over to the Panorama Lounge, which is a huge room with enormous windows giving a forward view. The bridge is immediately below, and is very “traditional” compared with our two ships – it has big meters and gauges everywhere and the minimum of computer wizardry. It is, however, very spacious.

Dinner on the ship was very nice indeed, consisting of about seven miniscule nouvelle cuisine courses – although we were hurried off the ship after our dessert as the captain was keen to leave the wharf before an approaching iceberg got within range.

Here’s another timelapse video showing the James Clark Ross arriving at Rothera last month – as you can see, bringing the ship alongside the wharf through the brash ice requires some complex manoeuvering!

In the fortnight since I last wrote there’s been a definite end-of-term feeling on base. People have completed their field projects and come back to base – some have gone back to the UK already – and the returning Field GAs have evicted the tumbleweed that was blowing down the corridors of the Sledge Store. Our two Royal Navy “air support assistants” have also left – so there’s just three of us now to handle the rapidly diminishing radio work.

This Elephant seal took to living outside Bransfield house for about a week!

Late last night we closed Sky Blu, leaving Fossil Bluff as the only depot open – it’ll close in about ten days’ time.
I’ve taken advantage of a slightly lighter workload to go out on a couple of weekend jollies (I’ve not had much time off at weekends this season so far) – heading out on an afternoon boat trip to Lagoon Island and also reviving my somewhat rusty skiing technique at Vals.

Speeding to Lagoon

Skidoos at Vals – needed to pull you up the slope

The slope itself

In exactly a month from now a ship will be here to take me home. My arrangements have changed somewhat from what I’ve been planning for most of the winter – the RRS Ernest Shackleton will sail from Rothera on the 20th March and arrive in Stanley (in the Falklands) on the 25th or 26th. I’ll be spending two weeks in the Falklands – the first on the main island and the second on the much smaller outlying Saunders Island – before flying to Punta Arenas on Easter Saturday, 7th April. From Punta I’ll make my way north through Chile and Argentina before meeting up with the RRS James Clark Ross in Montevideo on the 8th May. Four of us from Rothera are sailing back to the UK from Monte – we should dock at an as-yet-undecided UK port on the 31st May.

British Rail would like to apologise for the delay in updates to this blog. It’s nearly a month since I last wrote and so this is a monster catch-up on everything that’s happened so far this year…

Christmas on base was pleasantly low-key, as it’s right in the middle of our busy season. As the weather was good and work was behind schedule we carried on flying, so I spent Christmas afternoon doing air traffic rather than dozing in front of the Queen’s Speech.



A busy day at Sky Blu – three Twin Otters at once!
Shortly after Christmas I got sent into the field. As usual, I was told that I “might possibly be going to Fossil Bluff tomorrow” and then found myself copiloting down to Sky Blu, overnighting there, and then going on the following day to Pine Island, which sounds like a lovely place but is in fact a vast expanse of flat white empty glacier to the south-west of the Ellsworth Mountains. The flight down there does, however, take you right over the mountains (and as these are the highest on the continent, you fly as high as possible and through a handy pass between the bigger ones). The view is awesome, but with so sense of scale it’s hard to judge the size of the mountains themselves. Pine Island Depot is (or was – more on that story later) a typical BAS fuel dump – a hundred or so drums of aviation fuel buried in soft snow in the middle of the wilderness. The depot is marked by an empty drum on the end of a tall wooden pole – this can be seen clearly from the air and will also show up on the aircraft radar.



Flying over the Ellsworths
Our task was to dig up all the drums and fly them out to other depots nearby to be used on forthcoming projects. Over the two years since the depot had last been visited the snowfall had buried the drums under 2.5m of snow, so eight of us armed with shovels dug into the depot and then started dragging the drums out with a skidoo. Having brought 30 or so drums to the surface we split up – a pilot and co pilot going with each of the two aircraft to fly the drums, seven at a time, up to Castle Depot, which was about a 2.5 hour round trip. I ended up doing more flying than digging, as one of the team doesn’t like flying and would rather dig…



Pulling the last drum out of Pine Island depot – it was a BIG hole!
The whole operation took just over a day – we arrived one afternoon and had finished by mid-afternoon on New Year’s Eve. Unfortunately we were just too far away to get back to Rothera for the big party, but Dickie, Geoff, Nico and I welcomed the New Year at Sky Blu with Liz and Mark, who very hospitably shared their food and drink with us.
After that I got dropped off at Fossil Bluff and spent a very pleasant four days in the very homely hut there. It really is an idyllic place to stay – I’d have liked to stay longer but I was wanted back on base again. So ends my Last Field Trip.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we’re into the Peak Season. Last year this felt a bit like running a rather chilly branch of Butlin’s with lots of visiting people coming and going for about four weeks, but this season all the visitors came at once, leading to one very disrupted but entertaining week.
It started with ITN, who sent two journalists and two techies down to Rothera to do a series of live reports into the news programmes on ITV1. They seemed to get on pretty well with everyone, but the reporting seemed quite superficial and sensationalised – but that’s the media for you.
Then the whole world went mad. HMS Endurance arrived, and the base was suddenly full of people in incongruous green camoflage. It was certainly very entertaining watching the crew and Marines skiing, sledging and generally mucking around in the snow.
Very shortly after the Endurance we had a late Dash-7 flight from Punta Arenas, bringing us HRH Princess Anne, her husband Admiral Tim Lawrence, and a small entourage. They got off the plane and boarded the ship after midnight with no noise or ceremony. After that, everyone was on their best behaviour!
The plane was actually earlier than planned, but bad weather was forecast and this would be the only opportunity for several days to actually get a flight in. The programme for the visit was hastily rejigged and suddenly we found ourselves giving the VVIPs (yes, royalty get to be very, very important people!) a tour of the field operations departments – including a visit to the hangar to see the aircraft and a look at the work in the Ops Tower. The whole tour was conducted with the absolute minimum of formalities and it was quite clear that the Princess and her party were keen and interested to see everything and meet everybody. Afterwards, a group of winterers (including myself) joined the party for tea and cake and a long and rather rambling conversation that was ostensibly about wintering but went onto a whole range of topics.
On subsequent days they saw pretty much every aspect of the base – the biology labs, the diving facilities, all the physical science work, the water-treatment and sewage works, the whole lot. They also went up to Vals and saw camping and field equipment and rode skidoos! There was also a Winter Olympics in which several teams from the Navy and Marines competed against two BAS teams in skiing, snowboarding, snowball throwing, sledging and snow sculpture. The result was a draw between BAS and the Marines! More practice needed perhaps – in previous years we’ve beaten them hands down…
We also had a ceremony to bury a time-capsule under the new building – a photo of the 2006 winterers and a journal in which lots of people wrote entries will be preserved there (hopefully) until 2107!
There were also two social events – a buffet lunch at which all the VVIPs (the Princess, Admiral Lawrence, Phillipa Foster-Back of the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust and Jane Rumble, who’s head of the Polar Regions Unit at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office and also acts as the “Governor” of the British Antarctic Territory) met all the staff on base in a fairly informal manner. There was also a more formal dinner. A few winterers were picked to sit on the top two tables and to my surprise I ended up being placed next to Princess Anne! The dinner was excellent (thanks to Cyril, Riet and Alan) and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. The conversation flowed very well on all sorts of topics and then at the end there were a few short speeches – one from Chris Rapley (director of BAS), one from the Princess and one from Jane Rumble, who said that the Placenames Committee had decided to name the mountains on the southern part of Adelaide Island “The Princess Royal Range” in honour of the occasion.
Whilst it was slightly incongruous to see the Princess in BAS-issue moleskin trousers and rigger boots (although to be perfectly honest her private secretary looked much more uncomfortable than she did!) it was clear that both she and her husband enjoyed themselves, relaxed and had a genuine interest in the life and work of the base.
They left on HMS Endurance after four days on base and visited several other bases on the peninsula, including Palmer, Vernadsky and two abandoned British bases, Stonington and Deception Island. The media left a day or two later, although not before I’d had a chance to go over and watch them do a live link into the evening news. This was quite strange for me as it brought back memories of both working at the BBC and (perhaps more) days of doing student TV in York – operating in makeshift facilities using miles of wire and not enough staff!
Now we’re back into the usual routine, although last night the Scottish contingent on base organised a Burns Supper and Ceilidh (I’m still stiff from the dancing) and tomorrow the L M Gould will be back here tomorrow for the traditional party – it should be a good night!

One of the nicer perks of working down South is going co-piloting. Because the Twin Otter only requires one pilot but BAS regulations say that no-one goes off base alone, sometimes you get asked to go out on a flight. This is a great deal of fun – you get to sit in the front of the plane, enjoy the scenery and help out the pilot with various jobs (usually loading and unloading).
Anyway, a week or two back I got a co-pilot on a routine fuel run to Fossil Bluff and back. This takes about four hours, and begins with making tea and sandwiches to take with you in the canteen whilst the pilots are being briefed on the weather situation. Having got a decision to go from Nico, my pilot for the day, I put my outdoor gear on and headed down to the apron where the plane was being fuelled and loaded.

Clem and Doug fuelling the plane

The plane’s fuel tanks are filled with fuel from the bulk storage at Rothera, but our job today was to take five drums of fuel (just over 1000 litres) down to Fossil Bluff for other aircraft to use when they’re working further south. Loading a plane is quite tricky – you have to be careful to ensure that your load doesn’t disturb the plane’s balance – and the pilot is responsible for arranging the load and lashing everything down with ratchet straps.

Loading drums

Having got the plane fuelled and loaded I was briefed on what to do in an emergency (basically, switch the engines off and get out via any available exit that doesn’t lead to a whirling propeller!)
and then it was time to go. Chocks away and off we go down the runway. The Twin Otters have an extremely low take-off speed (slightly more than 60mph!) which means that even fully laden you can get off the ground using only half our 900m runway.
It was a cloudy day, so we bimbled our way down to the Bluff below the clouds, travelling at less than 1000 feet for most of the journey. With a heavy aircraft it’s important to stay out of low cloud as it can cover the aircraft in a thick layer of ice which makes it much heavier and harder to control. Normally we would have climbed up above the cloud but todays cloud extended from about 1000 to around 12000 feet, so we couldn’t easily climb above it.

Twin Otter console

Nico the pilot

When we landed at Fossil Bluff Nico rolled the fuel drums out of the plane and I helped Mark and Richard to stand them up and arrange them neatly into a depot for use by other aircraft later in the season or next year. Then we loaded the plane up with empty drums and other rubbish to fly back to Rothera.

Rolling the drums out of the plane

Richard and Mark building the depot

After an hour on the ground we headed back. With a much lighter aircraft Nico tried to climb up above the cloud – we went up to 12000 feet (where the air is very thin and you can get a bit dozy) but the cloud was still there for the first part of the journey when suddenly we burst out of it and flew along in sunshine above the cloud tops. Finally we spotted a hole in the cloud and dropped down steeply towards Rothera, and made our approach from the South, passing very close to the James Clark Ross which was moored near the end of the runway.

Home again – Rothera runway and the JCR

As some of you might have gathered from the fact that I haven’t done any blog updates for six weeks, I have been more than a little busy! In fact I’d go as far as to say that I don’t think I’ve ever worked as hard as I have these last six weeks – starting early, finishing late and fielding constant questions and issues from people during every meal break!

Rather than try and give a full history of what has actually happened, here are the main developments in a few specific areas:

Firstly, the planes. There’s been a lot of problems with the aircraft even after they arrived. We had regulatory issues with the Twin Otters and a huge saga with the propellors on the Dash. In the latter case the Dash and its crew were stranded in Stanley for about a fortnight after turning back in mid-flight with oil pouring from two of the propellors. Eventually parts were obtained and the props were repaired, but it took a long time. Various people who had been given seats on Dash flighs were instead put on the James Clark Ross for a slow cruise down the Peninsula!
Finally in mid-December the BAS board lost patience with the new aircraft maintenance company and revoked their contract, awarding a new contract to the Canadian firm who had maintained the aircraft for the last five years.

Ships: Just before Christmas the James Clark Ross made an appearance, festooned with huge amounts of deck cargo and tied up against the wharf to get rid of it all before heading off round Ryder Bay on a science cruise. When they returned they unloaded everything else and so the base is now a sea of boxes, containers and vast amounts of packaging. There’s always a delicate balance to strike between overpackaging and having stuff damaged in transit, so we end up shipping a lot of packaging material back to the UK for reuse each year.

People: We’re now up to 95 on base, with a large contingent from Morrison Construction who are building the first phase of the new base. More importantly for me we’re now up to full strength in the Comms team. Tristan (my replacement) and Crispin (one of the summer radio operators – he’s an FGA who fancied a change of scene) arrived on the second Dash flight and it’s been a bit of a baptism of fire as we went quickly into a very complex operation to put a team of four onto Pine Island Glacier which is out on the far western edge of our normal operating area. Because of the trouble with the Dash, our two Royal Navy staff arrived on the JCR. Simon and Jamie are trainee helicopter pilots and will be dividing their time between doing comms work and helping out the Air Unit with refuelling, loading and maintaining the aircraft.

Christmas: Everyone always asks about Christmas down here. It’s a lot more low-key than in the UK because it’s right at our busiest time of year. There’s no pre-Christmas build-up and the general consensus is that we don’t think about it until the JCR leaves (usually around the 22nd). But we do now have decorations up, we had our Christmas dinner (turkey, of course, but no bones – bone-in meat is forbidden under the treaty) and people received gifts from home. But today (Boxing Day) all the BAS staff are back at work. I worked on Christmas afternoon – as the pilots wanted to continue flying as we had good weather – but it wasn’t too much hardship!