OK, we've just pulled out of the port at Montevideo bound for The Falkland Islands where we should arrive on Thursday. Have i mentioned that before?! Anyway, i took a few pics when we were slipping out of the harbour, not perhaps the most beautiful side of any country or city, but interesting nonetheless. Here are a few:
Myself, Dave and Andy the Rothera vehicle mechanic decided to have a few days away from Montevideo and took a bus a few hours up the coast to a kind of beach resort place called Punta del Este. 
It's not the sort of place i would usually choose to go to - lots of high rise hotels, a marina, rich people's houses - but it was preferable to more time in the city and we had hoped to get some surfing in. In the end the surf wasn't suitable and we couldn't find an open hire place anyway so we settled for swimming in the sea. Our hotel also let us use their bikes so we had an excellent cycle on saturday which took us away from the built up areas and into much nicer wooded residential areas and eventually into the countryside for a bit, then in a big loop back to town. The rest of the day was spent on the beach, relaxing and having a few beers and swimming.
On Sunday we headed back into Montevideo to cover a gangway watch, then later on that day the new BAS people arrived on the ship - some of whom i'd met before at the conference, some new. It'll be very different on the ship now with new crew and new passengers and now three people crammed into our little cabin. Only four days trip to the Falkland Islands and our next stop Mare Harbour.
Hello again after a fairly lengthy delay due to going ashore at Montevideo and having a look at how the Uruguayans live, and most especially, how they eat. Which is extremely well, by the looks of things! The meat market just outside the port entrance has been the scene regular carnivonous banquets of outstanding quality, and there's been plenty of beer (not so supremely tasty...) to wash it down. The crew that we've got to know quite well in the last month left a few days ago, so the first night out in the city was their leaving event, celebrated in good style in the bars in the area round the port. The first picture shows us heading out to town through the
maze of containers and seriously heavy duty machinery, wheelchairing Andy the chief antagonist of the crossing the line celebrations who was brought to heel by Neptune's will and broke his ankle. Then there's me and Dave and Alastair the "gadget" (trainee engineer) having a beer. We we were joined later on by Tamsin and Richard who had been representing BAS at an embassy dinner party hosted in honour of the arrival of the Shackleton. It's really nice to get off the ship and have a walk around, although Montevideo is not amongst the most beautful cities i've ever walked through, it also has a certain friendly charm... all for now, rob
I got my certificate for the crossing the line ceremony today, which means that i never have to drink chilli sauce or be immersed in food waste ever again! And last night we had a barbecue on the helipad, probably my last ever on the Ernest Shackleton. Here's a pic of Chris, the 3rd mate enjoying a bit of pork. Not much else doing today, early night. rob
But the whale was not in full view. In a serendipitous event of almost ridiculous unlikelihood, i took a picture of a little fishing boat yesterday, and found only when i blew the image up on the screen that right in the very background, about 15 miles away on the horizon, was the splash of a breaching whale as it crashed back into the water! That was quite lucky i think you'll agree. People on board reckon it was probably a humpback, and we had seen a few humpbacks breaching earlier in the day, although so far away it did little more than increase the anticipation of seeing them without having to strain your eyes. 
The picture on the left here is zoomed in 4x digital and is quite impressive i think. Nothing much else to report today, apart from we had a cheese and wine night last night which was very pleasant but made working this morning a little less enjoyable than it otherwise might have been... A few of us were out on the fo'c'sle (the bit right at the bow) yesterday, trying to get a picture of the elusive flying fish, but without even a sniff of success. but i did take a nice picture of the water whence they came, and the Shackleton's red bow ploughing through it. We're
We began getting close to the Fernando de Noronha Islands yesterday, which effectively marked the end of our Atlantic crossing, and we were greeted by loads of birds flying with the ship, and around it, trying to catch the flying fish as they leapt out of the water or just after they went back in. 
There were masked boobies, with their distinctive blue beaks (above, having a rest on the front of the ship).
Also hanging effortlessly over the place in the ship were frigate birds (below left), occasionally folding up their wings and plummeting at the sea.
I don't know what this bird is, maybe someone reading does... There were more of these as we approached the islands.
We passed the Fernando de Noronha Islands, a sparsely populated and beautifully shaped set of islands off the coast of Brazil, at about 4 degrees south just before dinner time, a good time for pictures, and here are a couple of mine. There were some interesting rock structures. My first sight of a bit of Brazil is promising indeed! That's almost all i've got to say at the moment. As far as daily routine goes - myself, Dave and Tamsin are keeping up the met observations, although we've given up the 5am one for now as it messes up the rest of the day, so the watch will doing it. 
Hi again, I am now in the southern hemisphere! And almost as good, my hair is still on the top of my head where evolution has deemed it most necessary, and after the carnage of the crossing the line ceremony this is indeed lucky... I'll try to sum it up quickly without going into too much detail. Unfortunately due to the nature of the festivities, very few people were willing to take their cameras out so the pictures are few, but i've stuck a few in anyway. We were divided into people for whom this was a first time thing, and those who were experienced line crossers. Our side, about 10 people, ran away and hid on the monkey island (the roof of the bridge) and proceeded to block the only ladder up with rope and tomato ketchup on the rungs (yes, it gets messy). Then we had a few beers in the sun and waited for the "other side" to come and find us. But due to the grapevine and perhaps a few political leaks they already knew where we were and made quick with their feet up to the bridge deck with the intention of hurting us with sticks. We managed to hold them off using improvised munitions (water and flour bombs), but most of them were pretty hardened and didn't take long to break through and give us all a lashing. Basically they had to "arrest" us (cable tie our hands 
and march us to the aft deck), then "try" us in front of the court of Neptune for a variety of ridculous and some would say fanciful crimes, such as being too nice. So whilst most of our number were quickly captured, myself and tamsin managed to escape down through the ceiling of the bridge and went down ito the ship's bowels and managed to hide there for another half and hour, whereupon we were discovered, i fled to the monkey island again, but was eventually captured and taken before the court. This was where it got delightful, as we were invited to kneel before Neptune and his wife, found guilty, slapped about the head with a large fish, then hauled to the back of the deck where each one of us in turn was given a mouthful of chilli sauce and covered in slops (a mixture of rotting kitchen waste which was started as we left the UK). Only then were we allowed to get a bit of a hose down with the ship's fire hoses ans continue trying to stifle the gag reflex as the smell of putrid kitchen excrement lingered on for a lot longer. But i kept my hair! This was due to the fact that in the initial confusion when the two sides first met, Andy, the chief antagonist of the opposing team, managed to break his ankle. It was he who was to be the barber. He's hard as nails but a very nice chap so all the best for him fr a quick recovery. Thats about it for the crossing the line ceremony, except that since i was last to be captured i now have the dubious honour of having to buy 2 cases of beer for everyone else.... All good fun! rob
Hi folks! We're "crossing the line" tomorrow, and as far as i'm concerned that's a big mess of bad and good news all mixed in together! Most importantly it'll be the first time i ever set foot in the Upside Down Bit, and secondly it will be a chance to be seriously humiliated by those of the crew for whom this is the most prominent date in their social calendar, much in the same way as game keepers venerate the start of the stalking season... Here's what i look like now, on the 11th of November 2006. I will post an update on my appearance after tomorrow!
Hi, just a wee note on comments...
Thanks to the people who have left comments, i didn't notice that they were there until today! It's probably a good idea to e-mail me your comments instead of putting them on the blog, because if i don't have your e-mail address, i can't reply to them. My e-mail address is emedentes@hotmail.com or rob@robertwebster.org. I look forward to hearing from you... Cheers, rob (p.s. i would like to have illustrated this post with a picture of those walking trees in the lord of the rings painted with the hammer and sickle, but didn't have time).
Hello again! I thought i'd posted a little bit when passing the Canary Islands, but it appears i forgot! So here's a picture of one of the main islands looking atmospheric and forboding, but nicely chopped in half in the horizontal by some stratocumulus at a few hundred feet off the sea... We passed by this way a few days ago, by the way. I was mightily disappointed to see not one of the expected swarms of tiny little yellow birds. Did see some flying fish last night though! Always a happy event...
Hello again brave people! (Marx Brother's aside: Do you follow me? Well, stop it or i'll have you arrested...). No, it's very nice to know that folk are interested in what i'm doing!
Just a small post this time, more as an aid to placing me on the globe than as a chronicle of ground-breaking activities on board. Last evening and night we passed through the Cape Verde Islands, conveniently timed for another picturesque sunset. Seas are still calm and warm (sea temp. 27C yesterday) as you'd expect in the tropics. Nice fluffy cumulus humilis, the friendliest of all the clouds, are appearing regularly like in the picture. What am i getting up to during the working day? Yesterday i was scraping dirt from the skirting boards on the officers deck. I think that explains why i haven't been going into too much detail about daily routine! As i write this, the results are still coming in from the US midterm elections and i'm sort of glancing at the Guardian and it looks like the Democrats may have secured overall control of the House and Senate.... Bad for certain secretaries of offence and presidents, but whether it will make a difference in terms of dealing with the mess in the middle east, we'll have to wait and see. It's already a bit difficult to keep up with world events, what with no TV, newspapers and only a very slow internet connection. Although it makes me think back to when Shackleton's Endurance expedition left the UK at the very beginning of the World War I thinking that it would be over in a few weeks, only to return 2 years later and find the whole social fabric of the world ripped apart in the continuing international carnage. We don't know our born! Anyway, got domestic chores to do... cheers, rob
We're fairly cracking on! That's one full week on the ship, the weather is lovely and the seas calm, everyone's settled in and everything is generally ship shaped... Today we had a special cameo from the Madeira archipelago which arrived in time for a beer at the end of the day. This picture is one of the northernmost small islands of the group, just a few miles across with an interesting shape. Kind of looks like an huge and ancient deep sea fish beached and only half submerged by a receeding sea.
As predicted, the weather produced a stunning sunset as we neared the main islands. I took loads of photos but this is a good one with some nice cumulus clouds hanging in front of the sun.
Saturday in these sorts of hospitable latitudes is generally celebrated with a half-day of work and a barbecue at the back of the ship (or, as i keep forgetting, the stern in seafarer's parlance). So the chefs brought their marinated prawns and steaks and got them cooking right above the propellor and we had an excellent meal and watched the rest of the islands go past into the night. A lot of beers and gin & tonics were drunk and it was generally a very nice way to spend an evening. The last picture is of Dave taking his turn at tending the coals.
05 November - Not much doing today, just a bit cleaning, then a quick walk round inspection by the Captain which ensured my cabin was properly squared away! I've just been relaxing by making some tunes using samples from around the ship...
I'm just having a look at the monitor now, and we should be passing through the Canary Islands in a few hours. I'll take a look on the monkey island then and get some pics to post tomorrow or the next day...
Thats it for now, i'm going on deck...
Things are going a bit smoothly today. Last night's game of scrabble was forced through to it's conclusion despite a rowdy board and the loss of a player due to motion induced illness. Today, however, order has been restored to the petulant sea and this was the view from my cabin at 8.30 this morning, after leaving Vigo and travelling SSW down and away from the Iberian coastline.
There is quite a lot of work to be done before we arrive in Montevideo and the ship becomes packed like a pilchard tin, and a lot of it involves painting. So today myself and Tamsin were charged with recoating the railings along the starboard side at the behest of the bosun - named 'Chicago' for reasons i probably wouldn't understand. So apart from the 0600, 1200 and tonight the 1800 observations, this was pretty much my day. Even at midday we could still faintly see a bit of Portugal from the bridge. I'm beginning to settle in a bit more to the routine and feel of the boat - it still seems very bizarre that this is my job! We will now fall into a fairly steady routine for a while, basically getting up at 5.30am to do the first observation (in total darkess at the moment, but not for long!), then getting another hour and a half of sleep before breakfast and then starting the days work at 10. All in all, a fairly realxed few weeks lie ahead... That's it for now, Rob
