6 January: Day 62 on base for those who were here at the start, day 37 for me

8.30 pick up for shop on the Nansen. This was the third time I have been on this ship so far. It is huge, luxurious and had around 300 passengers. We all got showers and managed to get the missing bolts and washers for the carpenters so the metal work for the beam in Bransfield House can be attached now. Just before we left we got lunch… burger and chips… not a Mc Donald’s version.. thank God.

Excited today as the penguin colony that is counted every 2 days (the chronology colony) has finally got chicks. Once there are 95% nests with chicks this triggers the full island count. Few days/week or so to go, but we are expecting a huge increase in chick numbers now so we will see. After dinner, Jerome did his talk on the rat eradication programme in South Georgia that he was involved with. Had listened to this before but Al and Pete had not heard it. Was good to hear it again, such a huge achievement to eradicate rats from the island and really interesting to know how they did it. We are starting a programme of talks each of us has to do. Al tomorrow is doing his on NZ Antarctic Heritage Trust and all his work on Scott and Shakleton’s huts. Two months on for the fab 4 who got here first… badge ceremony for 2^nd month in the bunk room was fun event…. More sewing for me probably.

7 January: there’s a leopard out there!

No ship today. Everyone getting various sorted in the morning. Made three loaves of bread and did more work on the inventory of food from the boat shed. We also did lots of trips back and forward to the Nissen hut with food to restock the shelves. I think once all goes on the spreadsheet, (I do love a good spreadsheet, sad I know), we will have some sort of system that will hopefully be stuck to then there will be less to count at the end of the season in March for the others. There will also be far too much food left as this season as we have been given a lot of food from ships and have eaten a few meals on the ships too. The call went on the VHF radios that there were leopard seals between Jugla and our island. Some had got down to the rocky shore with their cameras and I watched for a while then thought, why not… so went back to the Nissen to get the camera and down to the shore. Tide was not too high but was a bit of a clamber to get closer to the two leopard seals and two crabeaters resting on an ice floe really close to the shore yawning. We watched for quite a while then part of the floe cracked dropping one leopard off.  A crabeater had already left for a swim leaving one leopard and one Crabeater to laze on the reduce floe. Decided to go back and as I was leaving another call went out “ albino penguin”. Laura got the photo with penguin looking out of the water and I have a picture from above with it swimming in the water. Quite ghost like figure and quite bizarre and rare but is something that happens. After dinner Al did his talk. Amazing insight into the heritage world from the heroic age of Antarctic endeavour… what a life!

8 January: day off! Al the albino is back!

A slow start, looking at leopard seal photos taken… far too many!

Al the albino penguin first sighting on land. Jerome and Bridie went out to count the colony and there was a radio call to say they had spotted the albino penguin from yesterday in the colony. Everyone dashed out with cameras. I tried to start taking photos but had not replaced my memory card from yesterday into my camera. Back I went, slightly irritated but got back in time to stand and stare at this ghostly penguin. It tried so hard to be friends with the others, but they just peaked at him. It did not help that it was trying to fit in collecting stones from other nests. Just looked like it wanted fit in but sadly not. Not sure what will become of it. We looked up about them and strictly it is not an albino but a leucycitic penguin. They are still have some pigment including their eyes so they are not blind. Although it looks ghostly white, it actually has a slight brown tinge. We looked up that happens to about 1 in 10,000 penguins and particularly gentoos.

9 January: four yacht day and the sun shone

Quite an uneventful day for me. I did not get involved with the yachts today except the last one. I was trying to finish the food inventory. It was a glorious day, Mt Luigi and the seven sisters behind the station had no clouds and the sea was glistening.

All got even better when the last yacht asked us for a BBQ. All 7 of us were picked up in the sunshine and climbed the ladder from the zodiac onto the deck. There were 11 passengers and more crew.  Quite compact inside but a shop was offered, and we sat chatting to the passengers. Seems many were USA medics on a photography charter. The leader was a photographer taking charters twice a year to the Antarctic and they take photos in the day and then some evenings spend time critiquing them and considering how they could improve them. It was a a good evening although clearly not dark. Burgers, and kebabs for 30. How the cook who was English managed that in such a tiny galley was amazing. Chatted to her for a while. Apparently they will be at Elephant Island in a month or teo for 3 weeks there is some filming being done and rumour is we will get to see it sometime in November. Wonder if it will be another something about Shackleton’s epic trip to save his men from the Endurance who were stranded for over a year on the island. We will see.

We were next to the glaciers in the bay. We all felt we might be a little too close, but we were fine. The night before some of us had been woken by a loud thunder which must have been a big piece of glacier calving into the sea. The bay had a lot of large bergy bits, so it was likely something had come off and was broken up in the bay.

10 January: Plancius

Just the one ship booked in today. Pete and Al also came with us so they could have a shower too. This ship is very familiar to us. We’ve all set up shop several times in the dining room. The exped leader Pippa is very helpful and all runs smoothly apart from a few European credit cards that all have additional security and need two-way authentication via either a person’s App, email or SMS. If it is SMS and they do not have ApplePay, GooglePay or PayPal then they cannot complete their purchases. It is quite mad that they even have such options to purchase things here but that is the system and we work with it and most of the time it works….only a few disappointed European customers. When we returned Al (albino)was still trying to make friends with the other penguins but they are all sitting on nests and protecting chicks or eggs yet to hatch so it’s not going to work. \not sure what he/she will do.

11 January: all hands on tools

Everyone was helping the carpenters today. Can’t really remember what happened as trying to recall after a few ship free days and general work on the island instead….

12 January: No yachts, no ships

It seems this week is less busy than we expected. Various have either cancelled or have just not had the same number of bookings as we would usually have. Today has been colder than usual and quite grey. Main reason it has been very blowy with a westerly, so bergs get blown into the bay. All sorts of odd shapes but nothing too huge.

I was on washing up duty so there was porridge for breakfast… as far as I am concerned it is the devil’s food (texture problem) then of course there is the porridge pan…. groan. Still after battling with that, it was down to the boat shed to finish the food inventory. Pete’s also been there today painting with Laura the metal work for supporting the replacement truss in the museum. Of course, being cold, paint is not drying quickly so the metal was heated up first of all with a heat gun to put some warmth or at least not so it is ice cold before applying the paint. Going to need several coats of paint.

Crazy amount of lunch time washing up…. who decided we should all have tinned fruit as pudding… we never have a pudding at lunch time! Still, finally got through that and started the 3 loaves of bread process. In a cold hut, loaves struggle to rise, so here I am sitting 9.30pm waiting for the first 2 to rise ……

Laura did a talk about her time in the Arctic in the Sami people … all good stuff! Not got any boats booked in for tomorrow. We will see what needs doing…. Lots as usual.

13 January: No ship day again, but a couple of yachts

Day started a little grey and Laura and I returned to scraping the door and surrounds of Bransfield House. It’s been quite a long job all by hand and no orbital sander that has been my friend when doing the door of the cottage back home! Still finished that and it was lunch time. Jerome and Shabs had gone on a French yacht in the morning and had a cash only shop as there was no internet on the yacht, so there was counting of cash on the kitchen table which id anyone not from here had walked in might have been surprised. Still more money for the Trust that we have to somehow get back to the UK.

After lunch I set up my scraping and sanding job at the boat shed to start scraping one of the windows. The one that really needs sorting is right above a gentoo nest with a chick so that will probably need to wait until next year. Whilst up the ladder the call for “Lisa there is a medical emergency in Bransfield”. Various people running around but I had suspected a practice would happen either yesterday or today and sure enough a simulation was in action. Seems strange I have been here nearly 7 weeks and we have not done one. I learnt that none has been done since arriving on the island. Anyway, after doing a practice of Al drowsy with a ladder on top of him and various bits of him supposedly hurting we sorted him out, then had a debrief; what went well, what not so well. Back out on the ladder for another hours and then tidying up making sure we collected most of the paint away from the penguins. Frankly it is impossible to collect all. The buildings are looking quite shabby here. Perhaps a combination of COVID times and priorities elsewhere. The fact we do not have any tourists on the island is good this year as with the charity’s work conserving and protecting the huts for future generations, they look quite messy and need to stop the old paint falling off and littering the island as well as the structural repairs. Not something we can do much about at the moment as the penguins have nested around and under the buildings, so they take priority.

14 January: quite a day!

Woke to a gloriously sunny day. Al and Pete were finally taking a day off and we all had a beach litter survey planned for the afternoon. Factor 50 a must today. Beautiful reflections of mountains and glaciers in the bay and overnight a lot of brash ice had arrived. Got down to the boat shed to finish scraping the paint off one of the windows and when I got to the shore two leopard seals were resting on the ice floe in the bay. Whilst I watched bright yellow kayakers appeared… slightly odd but there was a ship at Damoy and they had paddled across to us. We had a chat with the paddlers and off they went again. All seemed a little bizarre but was a measure of how calm the water was. Sometimes the zodiacs are not able to get around from Damoy when ships are in the bay and have us on board but need us to get off before they can head to Damoy as the getting around the headland in a zodiac is too bouncy.

Lunch then helped to sort Bransfield House and all the rubbish and then pick and packing for the shop tomorrow morning. Jerome was on cook and decided to treat us with (using our 8 remaining eggs) to make crepes at 3.30. This was a treat for all then we all went out to do the beach survey. Glorious weather continued so it really was beautiful to spend 2 hours rummaging around the shoreline at low tide. We got around the island, remember it is tiny but at low tide the ricks normally immerse in water are revealed and at least double the island size and the amount of walking we can do. It was the first time I had clambered right round. Nothing special but does reinforce how tiny things are.

I sat with Shabs and Al for a while at the Chains Landing site then the others arrived with our final bottle of Pinot Noir… chilled! Plastic cups and we all sat looking out to sea having a drink before dinner. Can you believe it, three humpbacks passed us, blowing and diving? It was nearly the end of a lovely day. Jerome made chips after a yacht had donated potatoes for us a few days ago and there was a mountain of washing up for Laura after dinner and crepes earlier. Decided to have a quiet evening get myself sorted, start the penguin embroidery present for Al when he leaves in under 2 weeks now and also ready for a two ship day tomorrow, cargo drop with the second ship and I am on cook….it’s going to be busy.

15 January: frazzled day 46

Today, as expected has been a tad busy. We had a fairly frantic shop on a biggish ship in the morning. They wanted us off by 11, so it was a little fraught trying to get all the passengers through with their purchases. We parted and zodiac driver took us over to see a leopard seal on an ice floe near the base. They are often incredulous that we do not have a boat of any sort. It would be great if we had something even a kayak but the health and safety training etc would be mad so we are marooned.

So Bridie and Laura went on the second ship as there was an expectation that we would run a shop even though we had over 250 boxes of merchandise to get onto and up the island from the chains landing. It has also been a gloriously sunny day so to carry all these boxes from the landing site along worn snowy paths up onto rocks where we had laid tarpaulins to rest the boxes on, so they did not get covered in penguin poo…. 7 pallet loads of boxes stacked high on zodiacs kept coming… there were seven. Not clear of the politics involved with this ship and this cargo drop but I think a few favours too many were asked for, so Cambridge had said to do anything the ship requested…. Hence two people off the island trying to run a shop and do presentations when we really needed more hands on the island. Thank goodness for Pete and Al so we at least had five of us The crew realised as things started to pile up and the tarps were a walk away, that they would have to help. Tooks six extra pairs of hands to help chain the boxes up to the place for Shabs to tick them off before they were then lifted up into Bransfield House into the box emporium. It is crazy busy in there and surely enough stock to last the rest of the season and ready for next year’s team? There were a few of the ship’s expedition team who had not visited the island before, nor are they supposed to now, but as they had worked with us to get the cargo drop done it only seemed right to show them around the museum…. We had allowed the navy hen they help with a different cargo drop to do the same. The museum is a bit of a tip but hopefully the beam and all the metal supports will be competed tomorrow… if any of us can move.

Once all the boxes were sat on the tarps and we were ticking them off, two humpbacks started entering the bay. We do not usually see whales in the bay just further out to sea so we dropped everything and followed them around the bay, they disappeared by the glaciers and could not see them. We went back to work and as we were half way through the expedition team who were taking passengers to Jugla Island called us on the VHFs to say between Jugla and Goudier there were two humpbacks. How lucky! We watched them for about 20 minutes mooching about and diving mostly not deeply, so no flukes shown except the once. Think it might be a little shallow for them hence we do not get many in the bay. Quite a treat for all of us. We finished the boxes and back to the Nissen hut. I was cooking so I made some chickpea Moroccan thing with cous cous…. Only half the ingredients but seemed ok and a apple and pear cobbler. I was going to make an apple crumble… but with no butter at the moment (we need to beg some off the ships) so that was not going to be… so penguin shaped scones on top for the cobbler bit! The girls who had worked their socks off on the ship found a sympathetic member of the expedition team who sorted us for many cans of tonic and beer. Oh that beer was so welcome. We all went out to the chains landing site to look out to sea in the sunshine at 8pm…. Everyone is shattered and we have two big ships tomorrow to do shops and presentations on… not what any of us need tomorrow…. Onwards and upwards! Hopeful I might get this posted tomorrow… but will have to be quick again so no photos again…

Made it…. shower … need it!