Rob's Antarctica Diary

The Blogscape of Rob Webster...

2007-09-03T01:25:00.005Z

An update on the blog situation of I, Rob Webster

At the time of this edit (29th January 2009) I have 3 blogs, and 1 "diary". They are here:

http://rotherapoint.blogspot.com/

This blog. Leaving the UK, travelling to Antarctica, Winter 2007

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www.robertwebster.org/blog.html

Deals with the 2nd year and a half of my Antarctic time, including the making of my acoustic guitar.

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http://rob-webster.blogspot.com/

Post-Antarctica Rob. Travels in South America from January 2009 onwards.

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www.robertwebster.org/wind_turbine.htm

Building a wind turbine from scratch.

Thank you for reading! Rob

UPdates....

2007-08-30T16:36:00.000Z

apologies to everyone following my blog for the rubbishness of the updating situation recently - just to assure you that i have not run out of steam, and in fact am chock full of steam waiting to come out at high pressure like from an old kettle.

but i've just been away for a week on my second winter trip, (photos from that will be up soon), and i am also in the process of moving further blog episodes to my website at www.robertwebster.org since i have been neglecting to update that on account of the blog being here and blah blah blah...

i will post a link when its done in the next few days. cheers, rob

Covers for Warmth

2007-08-09T18:35:00.000Z

A pic from a week ago, showing some of the snowsculpture that the winds like to do.

Bad weather is the phrase stamped across the last week. It has meant the effective end of hopes for sea-ice travel on my forthcoming winter trip, but on the plus side has bulked up the snow stores which, given some decent conditions, may allow some new and exciting routes to be skiied...

So lots of indoor activities, many involving strings, ears, and chords of the vocal and guitar varieties. I've been practicing singing and playing at the same time and i'm definately getting somewhere and i think that somewhere is better. anyway, for anyone who happens to be interested i've made a few cover versions for my own enjoyment and practice of guitar skills.

Dead Weight on Velveteen - Jose Gonzalez Cover

If you haven't heard of this guy i recommend you look him up and listen to his album "Veneer" which is a cracking set of songs just performed on a classical guitar with vocals. His voice is 1 million times better than mine, of course!

Kathy's Song - Simon and Garfunkel Cover

Everyone knows this tune or has heard it before, it's quite typically sad for the Simon and Garfunkel stuff but still a cracking song about missing loved ones so quite appropriate.

Today i went out with Alison the marine assistant and GA Roger Stillwell (see blog link to right...) to do a CTD which basically means taking one of the little RIBs a few kms out into the sea and winding a sensor array down to 350m and then hauling it back up, which is an excellent way to get warm especially when, like today, it was about -12! It was so cold with the wind that i hardly took any photos but i took a little bit of video whn Ali was driving us back - the wind had got up and the sea was freezing very quickly (freezing temp of the sea is about -1.8 degrees C) so we were ploughing through varying thicknesses of pancake, nilas and grease ices. After a few seconds my fingers were totally numb so i had to stop... here lie the digital remnants of that little morning trip:

Escape from CTD Site 1

The crappy weather has also galvanised action from me on the matter of the Rothera Winter 2007 Film Festival, due to be held and judged in October. I am doing a 5 minute animation and doing a sountrack for it. Quite fun trying to work out how to do it...! That's all for now.

rob

A Couple of Pictures

2007-07-30T20:53:00.000Z

A view SW to Liotard with some nice lenticular altocumulus clouds above. These clouds are indicators of very high winds and often foreshadow dodgy weather! notice the edge of the sea-ice - our hopes of getting out on it have been shattered and have blown away with the ice towards the south. a few days ago there was total sea-ice cover (fast ice is the name given when its attached to the land), and the GAs were walking around on it, drilling holes and measuring it's thickness. it still remains to the north, but all the drilling process have to start again now, and it doesn't look too hopeful for getting sea-ice travel on my winter trip. never mind, i'm here for another year...!

One of my jobs is to make sure the automatic weather stations that we run keep running and getting and storing numbers. But most of them are 1 or 2 twin otter flights away from here, and we service them in the summer season. this one is just a few kms from rothera so i visit it each week.

it's been a slow blog and photo week as you can probably tell... have had some pretty poor weather and i haven't been out too much. hoping that will change soon as the sun slowly increases it's influence on the day...

Return of the Sun!

2007-07-15T22:23:00.000Z

And our shadows were cast wherever we stood... Although we had to walk up a hill to see it, we were granted an audience with the Sun, at about 2 o'clock - the first glimpse for what seems like a long time. It came beaming at us through the gap between Stork Middle and Stork North, silhouetting Orca, and staying visible for about 20 mins. here's a few pictures -

The Sun poking it's way through a mountain gap, the skiidoo tracks of other Sun-hunters cheese-wiring the plateau.

Tris and Pete looking North from a peak on reptile. Looking directly at the sun!

Tris enjoying a bit of UV despite the cold. He'd just had his HF radio set out and we were listening to a chap from France - unfortunately Tris's little 5 watt set wasn't powerful enough to respond. very nice day out. rob

Sonic mattress in E-minor

2007-07-14T22:17:00.001Z

a pic of Dickie (left) and Mark on the edge of the rapidly freezing sea. It was -15 that day and fairly calm, good conditions for sea ice formation. Today it's colder still... so, we're having a "beach party" tonight! just another excuse to drink cocktails and wear something slightly different, all in the name of fun. pictures from this one may be classified... and,

a bit of guitar picking with effects and a bit of fake slide guitar, made by sliding a microphone shaft up and down the fretboard. It was mostly improvised so the timing is not that solid, but i think it sounds quite nice...

sand - www.robertwebster.org/Tunes/Sand.mp3

(right click and save as...)

that's all for now, rob

More Nacreous Sky Delights...

2007-07-12T15:24:00.001Z

The best yet nacreal (not sure if thats correct...) display. couldn't resist taking roughly 1000 photos. here are a few of the juiciest:

Mother of Pearl

2007-07-11T18:39:00.000Z

A few pics of the same thing. But i think you'll agree that the thing is pretty stunning - the closest we get (still hoping this isn't always true) to the beauty of the aurora, these nacreous clouds are pretty high up, above most of the weather, in the stratosphere. these are the best ones i've seen so far.

Simple post of complex beauty

2007-07-10T18:25:00.000Z

Beautiful sunrise today, with a perfect calm sea.

Last week, another perfect sky, the silhouette of the met tower weather station and stevenson screen containing "A Thermometer". Looking north north east.

The partial moon rising from behind the adelaide island mountains.

Walk Around "The Point"

2007-06-29T17:49:00.000Z

What's the point? the point is Rothera Point, as referenced in the name of this blog, and it takes about 45 minutes to walk right round the coast. I sometimes go round in lunch hour and today went for a closer look at the forming sea-ice. It's coming along OK, but it's frustratingly tenuous, since the first decent bit of wind from the north (prevailing direction) will blow it all out. It's been calm and cold for about a week now, so most of the sea is covered in some form of ice. Simply put, the sea surface kind of freezes into tiny little plate shaped ice crystals a few millimetres across, called frazil ice, and once there are lots of these the surface goes a bit slushy (grease ice). Wind and currents then turn the grease into roughly round "panckaes" of ice which then bash into to each other and give the characteristic upturned edges, a bit like giant water lillies that you might have seen in the hothouse of a botanic garden. Eventually the pancakes raft over each other and freeze, or they freeze together side by side, thicken from the bottom, and eventually you can drive vehicles on it... Fingers crossed. But the wind has the potential to ruin everything in a short time.

A Weddell seal, the nicest looking and friendliest of all the sea-mammals around here. Docile and quite happy to have their picture taken.

A pic taken this morning when the almost-full moon was making some dramatic lighting effects on the low stratus.

A photo taken by Matt of some beautiful nacreous clouds we saw a couple of weeks ago - these are stratospheric clouds, very high, and form when the temperatures up there get below -82 degrees C. They are rare, stunning, and very important in the study of ozone depletion events which affect the ozone hole. This is because the surfaces of these clouds provide perfect venues for chemical reactions to occur which destroy ozone. Our weather balloons get info about the level of the stratosphere and the temperatures up there for the Brains in Cambridge to analyze. My boss in Cambridge is Jon Shanklin - one of 3 guys that discovered the ozone hole in the first place and is still studying it.

Mid-Winter Photo

2007-06-29T01:22:00.000Z

This is what i have to deal with...! Photo by Alistair Simpson, names added by me.

Where were you on the Week of Mid-Winter?

2007-06-28T23:20:00.000Z

A few photos from our midwinter pub crawl... all pictures not by me - i was sensible and left the camera in my room!

What have we here? BungeeBar! Each different work venue made up some sort of bar based entertainment for the grand Rothera Mid-Winter Pub Crawl. Although around the middle of the night, the crawl was more of an bungee cord inhibited sprint, with the possible reward of various types of drink. In this picture our chef Cyril takes a stroll up the course, defying the taut elastic to ping him - he made it look easy and almost reached the glowing bottle of whisky at the end of the course (similar to Nirvana - nice to imagine getting to, but simply impossible given the rules of life...). Even the mightly Frenchman was beaten by the fearsome retaining power of the giant elastic bands though, having just about time to read the label on his newly won bottle of port as he was pung gracelessly through the sledge store air. I managed reasonably well, coming out with a slightly shaken-up can of Stella but stangely, during my attempts on the prize, all cameras around the world simultaneously refused to work...

The gallant Gaul, stretching the leashes a bit like the Big Bang stretched space-time. Photo by Jim.

The GA bar - made out of the discarded corpses of previous drinks from previous places and times, reminding us all that despite the transitory nature of the hangover, the desire to have a nice pint of beer will endure until the end of the human race. Perhaps. The rocking chair there was made by Pete (head GA and general hardcore outdoor guy) out of bits of an old Nansen sledge that was decommisioned this year. Behind the bar is Roger Stillwell, bassist in our band, and another very decent sort of a fellow.

Boatman Jim "The Boatman" Elliott set up a bar in his boatshed by filling up a RIB with snow and all manner of tasty beverages. By this point, people were inclined towards making the snow into little spheres and throwing them. Photo uncredited...

This is me skiing off a little cornaced edge above the Bonner Lab - trying to find little exciting routes to ski around the base. Pretty cool picture by Matt.

Winter olympics - before the pub crawl we had a winter olympics sort of thing, with speed snow sculpture - a bit like ready-steady-cook, but i'd like to see those chefs making something as good as this in 20 minutes with only 1 ingedient. Of course they cheat in that program by having fresh herbs at the back on a shelf - a luxury not afforded us on this occasion. Other events were skiidoo trials around an obstacle course, abseiling off the communications tower, and throwing Mukluks (winter moon-boot things). My team of Alistair the Doc, and Birgit (marine biologist) came last... Pic by Liz
Matt and Tris had spent a week and a half clandestinely digging in a large snow drift out the back of the base, and unleashed this snowbar on the unsuspecting public on the evening of the pub crawl. Top Notch. Pic by Jim.

In the snowbar - Left to Right - Mike Mailing (base commander), Carpenter Scott Jamieson (with head turned away), Matt and Tris through the little hole in the "VIP Area", handing lethal but innocuous-looking "white russians" throught the portal, Kelvin (dive maestro), Steve Boulton (plumber). Pic by Jim again.

Alistair the Doc is pretty much Tee-Total but that didn't stop him turning his surgery into a den of iniquity, force feeding "fluids" to unsuspecting crawlers whilst they reclined in the falsely reassuring and obscenely comfortable "inspection table". I think Mike is just resting his eyes in this picture... Don't know who took this one.

Songs About Songwriting

2007-06-27T05:07:00.000Z

I've just recorded a cover of a Stan Rogers tune which i like a lot and thought i'd put it up here since most folk probably haven't heard of him - he's (was, i think he's dead now...) a guitarist and singer from Nova Scotia, sings a lot about the sea and fishing, and this song is about having difficulty finding inspiration. Ironically, (but quite often the case) the lack of a decent song produces one of true quality. Unfortunately you have to listen to me singing this one, but he's well worth looking up because his voice is one of the richest and most beautiful i've heard. Anyway, blah blah blah.... here:

http://www.robertwebster.org/Tunes/songofthecandle.mp3

Crevasse of Doom...

2007-06-25T15:37:00.000Z

Actually, more like "Crevasse of Frozen Water", which is probably a lot colder and prettier than doom... Anyway, i'm sticking this in as my first post in ages due to mid-winter celebrations and week "off", and communications problems (as distinct from "communication problems"...). A post will follow on what we got up to during the darkest week in an Antarctican's year. On saturday night, when most people in the civilized world between the ages of 15 and 25 are getting "drunk and pissed up on booze", (that's a "The Day Today" joke....!) me and 8 other people decided to spend a night in the Local Crevasse, which is about 1km from Rothera on the Local Glacier.

The interior, after abseiling about 30 feet through a small entrance hole, is absolutely stunning, exactly how i imagined an ice cave to be like when imagining such things as a child (reading Hans Christian Anderson stories perhaps, or Narnia or somesuch yarn with suitably evil ice queen). I hope some of these pictures can give you some idea of how excellent this place is. Also i had my little recording device with me because you can ping the icicles with a finger or another icicle (or kick some of the really huge ones) and they make beautiful resonant sounds like a glass glockenspiel (glassgenspiel?). OK that's enough words - besides, it has been proven that 1 picture is worth roughly a thousand times more than 1 word...

Pink Sky

2007-06-08T22:48:00.001Z

A splendid sky today - this was around 11 o'clock in the morning.

Optical Phenomenon...

2007-06-05T20:51:00.000Z

Today we got a nice light show from the north in the form of a sun pillar rising above the setting and invisible sun. It's caused by reflection of sunlight by the flat faces of ice plate crystals which are shaped like tiny "stop" signs (hexagonal). As they drift downwards they are aligned like leaves with the "stop" face almost horizontal and catch the light. Anyway, i think that's basically what happens - i'm no expert. The pillar lasted for about half an hour and held up what little daylight we have for a bit longer.

Runway Moods, Vol. 2

2007-06-02T22:23:00.000Z

It was such a nice day that the band decided to get out onto the runway to do some filming of us playing some tunes with a stunning backdrop... Most of these were taken between 11.00 and 13.00 - i also include them because they're quite representative of the light levels we're getting down to at the moment, with three weeks left til widwinter. When there's any low or medium cloud in the direction of the sun, then it's very dark and gloomy indeed... rob

Frost and Moon

2007-06-01T18:49:00.001Z

A few more pics from this beautiful Friday... The frost ones use a little bit of artistic licence in the post-processing but they look splendid so i thought i'd stik them on here.

Long Exposure...

2007-06-01T17:05:00.000Z

Hi everyone, i've been posting fewer pictures recently partly due to the rubbish weather and darkness - but this morning it was beautifully clear and the full moon was up, so i got some fairly long exposure shots (8-15 seconds) from the operations tower. Also got some black and white photos in the "green" room last night as i was trying to record some drums - thats why all the photos are in blacvk and white - i forgot to change it back, which missed the beautiful horizontal colours, but i think they still look pretty pretty. ok, thats all for now. i'm beginning to think that my monthly report probably won't write itself... rob

Hey ho!

2007-05-29T15:07:00.000Z

Hi folks, sorry about the lengthy delay in posting anything - things are good here, but it's been very dark and i haven't really taken any photos for ages. Also i have been very busy with something which i can't talk about at the moment, but is pretty exciting! "It" is currently taking up every spare minute of time for me and several other folk on base. All will be revealed at some point, assuming it doesn't turn into a big mess....!

Cheers, Rob

My Newish Website!

2007-05-17T14:16:00.000Z

Just a post to let you know about my website which i'm rebuilding at the moment - if anyone's interested it's got a fair amount of music on there, some photos which will be added to regularly, and in a while it'll have poems and pictures i've made. It's here:

www.robertwebster.org

Song Cover

2007-05-16T17:12:00.000Z

Hey ho - our rubbish weather continues, today it's freezing fog (like normal fog but with supercooled water droplets which freeze immediately onto cold surfaces) and visibility is less than 1000m - incidentally this is the difference between mist and fog.

Sooooooo.... I'm working on a new website which should be finished in a few weeks which will have a nice design and have all my music and words and stuff like that on it which i'll post a link to if anyone happens to be interested, once it's done.

In the meantime, here's a picture of my hat:

For no other reason than i think it's a nice image... Anyway, last night i did a cover of a Nick Cave song called Hallelujah - don't know if it's about anything particular, but the words are a bit unusual and amusing despite the sadness in the song:

Hallelujah (Nick Cave Cover)

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Rob's Back From His Winter Trip...

2007-05-08T20:52:00.000Z

Hello all, i'm a few busy backs from my first winter trip - the antarctic equivalent of a holiday, although significantly colder and less relaxing than any holiday i've previously had! Out of 6 days away we had 1 day of ski-mountaineering, 3 days of climbing, and 2 days of "lay-up" - basically whimpering in our tents in prohibitive weather. As these trips go, that's a very good record! Anyway, here are some pictures:

This is a view of Gwendolene, which we skinned up (climbed on skiis) on the first day, and then skiied down, taken from the top of Trident, the second day's climb.

A view back down the ridge of Trident we'd just walked up (click to enlarge).

One of a couple of beautiful sunsets from our camp on the Wormald Ice Piedmont, a tapaulined skiidoo in the foreground. Everything has to be flagged and tarpaulined to protect them from snow and to mark their positions in case a storm was to arrive suddenly. This picture is looking SW from the camp.

Left to Right - Andy (Mechanic), Liz (my FGA), and Me, climbing a hill called Orca, on account of it having a "dorsal fin" of rock on top of it. Photo by Roger Stilwell, Andy's FGA.

Loaded Nansen sledge, of a type used for pretty much a century. This is one half of the sledging provision for one group of 2 people, and is called a half-unit. When we travel we use 2 skiidoos and 2 sledges (a unit) in the following way: GA on skiidoo, attached by 10 metres of rope to one sledge, then 30m of rope to the front of my skiidoo, then i pull the other sledge behind me. The drivers are attached by harnesses and ropes to the skiidoos. All this is to save your life if any part of the convoy happens to be swallowed up by an invisible crevasse (it does happen! But not very often).

Stunning sunset looking towards NE.

Looking East from the camp at around moonrise/sunset.

Green, Blue, Pink, Purple. Black.

This one is great - you can clearly see Orion's belt if you blow the image up a bit.

We were lucky enough to be out camping when the moon was near to being full, so whenever it was partially clear we had amazing light, sunsets, moonrises, stars and with no light pollution it was really spectacular. Despite having my fingers nearly lost to cold (not really, but it was bloody brisk!) me and roger were having loads of fun with his tripod and long exposures in the moonlight, getting amazing shots of the scenery almost as if in daylight but with the added beauty of the stars. And a bit of cleverness in the use of headtorches and external flashes we got some pretty cool images.... The one of the 4 people (clockwise: Me, Pete (head GA), Andy, and Birgit (Marine Biologist)) was taken by Roger, the rest by me.

Boating/ Sea Ice/ Marvelousness

2007-04-26T20:00:00.000Z

Last sunday i got out on my first recreational boat trip - it was a stunning day and Kelvin the mountainous dive and boat maestro flung us around the bay in a RIB (rigid inflatable boat, which i'm also learning to drive), first up to the north where there are some stunning grounded icebergs, and then to the south to land on Lagoon Island (which i point out in one of my semi-legendary video clips (?!)), where there is a little simple bothy-type hut (see below) guarded by elephant seals - out of the water simply the most disgusting animals i've ever witnessed - to the point where it's comical! I might post some video in a bit of Ken (generator mechanic and old punk) getting into the hut which was quite amusing... Anyway, here's some photos....

Kelvin and Stella the RIB - 80 agitated horses on the back of this beast, Stella is mostly used for dive operations.

The hut on Lagoon, surrounded by elephants. These monsters can weigh several tons when fully bloated - their favourite (only) activity is letting vast amounts of putrid gas escape from their living corpses regularly and loudly. I am reliably informed that they are the epitomy of elegance under the water though, and i don't doubt it - they are specially designed for deep diving, and can happily dive to 1500m. That's one and a half kilometres straight downwards into water, just shy of a mile...

A very cool bit of iceberg - this one is about 15 - 20m high, and took on a look almost reminiscent of nougat or meringue.

Pancaking of the sea-ice near the base - early signs of sea-ice approaching. These pancakes start really thin, and gradually layer up then start rafting on each other and sticking together (if it's cold and calm enough for a decent length of time.

More pancake ice looking rather lovely.

The green building on the left with the red window edges is our new building - it was supposed to be finished by now, but instead it's a half empty shell that will be finished next summer, just in time for my second winter...

OK - c'est ca for now - things are very busy with work and preparations for my WINTER TRIP which starts on Sunday hopefully. Weather permitting...

Distorted Blues!

2007-04-18T22:26:00.000Z

No new photos for a while (we've had rubbish weather for several days) so here's another bit of guitar that i recorded last night - for some reason i'm really enjoying blues riffs at the moment - not, i hasten to add, a reflection of my state of mind at all - i just really like the sound of distorted electric guitars playing rhythmic droning sort of tunes like this one. Guitar recording has temporarily taken over from electronic beats for the moment, partly because it takes much less time, but i'll get back to the squeaks and bleeps soon no doubt!

Distorted Blues

(Right click and save as...)

A Bit of Video from Last Week

2007-04-16T21:10:00.000Z

Here's a couple of little insights into the surroundings of Rothera from last week, when the James Clark Ross arrived to take "Summer" away, and replace it with "Winter":

Short Film

(right click and save as...)

New Strings Attached

2007-04-15T20:35:00.000Z

I put some strings on my guitar this afternoon when i was feeling a bit low and missing home and stuff, so i sat down and recorded a bit of music to make me feel better. It's all made from the same acoustic guitar, and treated afterwards in cubase to make the bass and electric bits apart from a tiny vocal bit that appears twice). Here it is:

Dilation Blues

(right click and save as...)

That's all for now. Hi to all friends and family in the real world! love rob

Stork North

2007-04-15T13:32:00.000Z

It was a beautiful and cold (-10 Celcius, a temperature Halley people would consider barbecue weather, but cold for Rothera at this time of year), and I had a chance to go for my first proper snow/ice climbing trip after a few intros on technique.

Myself, Mark Gorin (GA) and Andy Webb (Mechanic) headed out early by skidoo to climb Stork North, which is one of 3 "Stork" hills the middle of which provides Stork Bowl that i've posted about before.

This picture shows part of the route we took (you can see it better by enlarging the picture) which was a good introductory climb - not too steep but exposed enough if you're not used to it - if you fell or slipped without being roped up you wouldn't stop 'til you hit the bottom. It took us about 5 hours to get to the top from here.

Andy belaying Mark (letting out just enough rope for him to climb, but leaving very little slack so that if Mark was to slip then he would fall the least distance possible). This is a bit more than half way up.

Mark climbing ahead to set up a new set of anchors another rope's length (a pitch) further up the snow arete.

A couple of photos of us at the top of the climb, with some pretty stunning views.

A couple of the view to the NW, which is one that we hardly ever get to see because of the wall of the Stork Mountains in the way. On the skyline, the flat area of snow at the far right is McCallum's Pass, the only way to through to the Western side of Adelaide Island and where most of the winter trips travel through at some point. It's heavily crevassed and is quite tricky to navigate, and is immediately followed by the infamous Shambles Glacier, but I should be finding out a lot more about that in a few weeks when i head out on my first winter trip.

We then headed SW down a knife edge ridge towards a col (low saddle bit between 2 mountains) between North and Middle Storks, and walked down off the ridge and then in big arc back to the skidoo to avoid crevasses at the base of the hill. I was a pretty excellent day, and i hopefully will do a fair bit more of this sort of stuff. It would be pretty excellent to get up a hill this way and then ski down to maximise excitement... I might stick some more photos up in Andy's got some good ones.

JCR arrives, I take pictures

2007-04-09T22:16:00.000Z

An Iceberg. A Nice One.

I Call This A Sunny Photograph of What Our Base Looked Like At The Time That The Photograph Was Taken From The Point That I Was Wielding My Camera At The Time I Took It. Or something equally pretentious...!

The tiny JCR and the considerably larger Mt. Gaudry (>8000ft)

Mooring crew which i was to join just after taking this picture, waiting to moor the JCR as it came alongside.

Recently i have been wracking my brains to try and take pictures of things that could maintain the interest in what i'm doing of those reading this blog. So tonight i present something rare, something never before displayed on this blog, something of such great splendour and scarcity that it's image should not really be shown too often for fear of debasing it's value. This special photograph that i have for you today contains almost ALL of the plant life of the Antarctic continent, over 50 Great Britains all squashed together at the bottom of the globe, and all major cities and settlements long since engulfed in ferocious snow. The semi-devine "Lichen". Pronounced by me with the scottish rasping "ch" of "loch", and by David Attenborough with the softer but sillier sounding "ch" of "children". And it's black! If there was a god he would have made this little plant bright yellow like gorse, or red like on an Admiral butterfly's wings.

More little video clips to follow... rob

Sunday Tune

2007-04-09T02:54:00.000Z

A beautiful Sunday, I had a pretty relaxing day on my first Sunday for a while not on gash or met or asleep due to nightshift duties. So i read, and hunted for "eggs"which were actually made of the gastronomically superior substance chocolate, and played around in the green room recording some more musical mosaics like this one:

Warmth Music

(right click and save as...)

Doing things like that help a lot when missing people, places, voices.

A New Sport

2007-04-04T14:12:00.000Z

I tried snowboarding for the first time a few days ago at Vals, which is a bit slow for skiing on if you're experienced, and absolutely loved it! We had about 6 inches of nice powder up there so the multiple falls were cushioned, but by the end of a few runs i could get down the slope without falling and was putting in some half decent turns.... It feels good to have a new sport to work on - you need as many "projects" (if thats not too businesslike a name) to keep you occupied down here as possible, to counter the relative absence of cultural or environmental stimulation. That is not to say that there aren't amazing landscapes and a "culture" of sorts here, but that they're narrow and need to be personally expanded by any means possible!

The view from Vals to the North, across the skiway to the peaks of Stork. The hill on the left is Middle Stork, and Stork Bowl pretty much runs from the top of that down to the left. It's good fun skijouring (sp?) across the snow plain there which means getting towed behind a skidoo on skiis.

A few more photos

2007-04-03T17:29:00.000Z

Just a few pictures today...

Here's Neil (logistics co-ordinator) doing a little bit of light incineration of an afternoon - the four wire cages along the front of the incinerator container are full of bags of dried, enzyme treated excrement which need to be burned every so often. Neil is wearing a face mask, but it's surprisingly fragrance free when it's been munched on by enzymes for a while... But while the enzymes are mid-meal, as they are when you walk into the STP (sewage treatment plant) then you really know about it! Other waste like wood and food are disposed of in this way too.

Icebergs crowding around the end of the runway and into hangar cove, sunrise behind.

Through the Eye of the Matt

2007-03-29T22:08:00.000Z

A quick one - here's a little tour around the base that Matt (electronic engineer and stand-in met person) did today and i thought was quite good (right click and save as...):

Matt's Walkround

It's quite big (about 70MB, but nothing your real world internet broadband malarky can't handle)! At some point i'll do another one with some other stuff that he missed out...

It seems a shame to make a post with no pictures so here's some from my walk round the point a few days ago:

The Benefits of Nights...

2007-03-24T13:07:00.000Z

You're up for sunrise! Last night was my last for the moment, so ive got to try and stay up for as long as i can today (Saturday) so that i go to bed at a normal time and get back into normal routine for Monday. Anyway, i had a walk round the point for a couple of hours this morning and tried to avoid the Fur Seals (their colloquial name - "furries" - belies a sinister and aggressive nature which is not even redeemed by them looking "cute", -as we know cuteness is considered an attribute of greater value to the human than potential to cause injury and then hideous infection). Anyway, you have to avoid the fur seals as much as possible which is surprisingly hard to do in low light, as they look very much like rocks, and move very like rocks as well, until you almost step on them. They then appear like rabid otters and roar at you. But the sunrise was beautiful and i took a few photos:

Me! Obviously...

Looking out from an ice overhang.

An Adelie penguin

A cormorant

The first of the winter trips left yesterday - these are our holidays from Rothera and take quite a few different forms, tailored as much as possible to the abilities and desires of the winterers. Mine is leaving in about a months time, and will be ski mountaineering mostly, using linked travel with skiidoos and sledges to get to a main campsite on Adelaide Island, then braching off from there...

Balloon Launch on a Beautiful Morning

2007-03-23T11:08:00.000Z

Beautiful sunrise over the Arrowsmith Peninsula when i was walking over to the hangar to release the last weather balloon of the week.

Looking NE across hangar cove after the balloon went up nicely...

A Weddell seal skulking in the bottom lefthand corner, and some nice patterns on the sea surface as ice tries to form on the calm surface.

Me in front of the ice cliffs at the far end of hangar cove - we should be able to walk across and climb on them when the sea freezes over. OK, i'm off to bed now to be ready for my last nightshift tomorrow night! rob...

Musical Noodles

2007-03-23T08:54:00.000Z

I've been fiddling about recently with the computer in the green room along with some new microphones that were brought down a few weeks ago for the band. So i thought i'd post up a few of the little musical doodles that i've been doing, with a view to learning enough about live sound recording to try and make the band sound good. Not that they don't already, it just takes a bit of skill (lots) to make a recording sound excellent and not just alright. Skills i dont yet have... Anyway:

Music for Landscapes

Guitar Suet

Drum'n'No Bass But Guitar Instead

This last one is an electronic one i did a couple of weeks back. Totally different style, you may notice...

Big Red Insects

Also, the Shackleton has been here and left this morning with the last of last year's winterers on it. Here's a pic of the ship (the one which i sailed down on) moored up at the wharf with a really nice sunset behind:

The leaving of the shackleton this morning was quite impressive - we had lots of out-of-date flares to get rid of and set them off as the ship left Rothera. I was lucky enough to jump in a RIB with Jim the boatman and a few others, and we chased the Shack at high speed (well, it felt like very high speed as we launched off the tops of waves and were airborne!) while we held out red smoke flares on either side and waved to the people on the monkey island (the "roof" of the ship). Hopefully someone took some pictures and i'll post them later. rob

Update!

2007-03-22T08:26:00.000Z

Hello. apologies for the long time since the last update! I'm on night shift this week which has necessarily shifted me out of sync with the rest of the base which has been a bit odd, especially at the moment when last years winterers are leaving and there's a feeling of the end of one "chapter" (the summer) and the beginning of winter. I haven't been taking so many pictures recently but heres a couple from the last 2 weeks:

Here's a great effect that appeared over the hills to the west of the base across Ryder Bay as the sun went down. We've been having increasingly impressive sunsets and if i get any decent pictures ill post them...

And heres one of me playing a pared down drumkit up on the top of the ramp just next to the base. The BAS photographer has been down for a few weeks so he had the band members out on the snow to take some posed pics, but some of them are quite nice... Until next time. Which shouldn't be as long as the last last time this time!

Fossil Bluff Closedown

2007-03-04T19:13:00.000Z

Hello all, i've just got back from a week at Fossil Bluff where i was helping to shut it down to prepare it for the winter. That basically involved a lot of inventorying and packing stuff away, as well as the standard Fossil Bluff jobs of refuelling the aircraft and depoting fuel drums for field use next year. I had to do some specific met related thingamyjigs so i was there for the full process which was great. The hut at fossil bluff was built decades ago, and it retains a real feeling of Antarctic history about it - it's got a Rayburn stove going non-stop for cooking and melting ice for water and to keep the place at a liveable temperature (it got down to -17 last week, it feels like winter is approaching fast and doesn't look like stopping...!). Toilet facilities are prvoded by a "rocket bog" - basically a normal toilet with no plumbing that fills up a tank, and then every so often you fill it with propane and light it, thus incinerating the nastiness and leaving the seat quite warm for a few hours afterwards... These first pictures were taken from the aeroplane on my way out, and show some of the ridiculous varieties of ice formations, mostly sea ice in various stages of development or dissapation.

A Few More Photos...

2007-02-22T15:28:00.000Z

Hello people! A few more photos, since words aren't flowing as freely today as my nose was last week... In the last 2 weeks there have been a few really nice days, one up Stork Bowl again, and then a few from base. I also had my winterer's local area familiarisation flight - basically on a really nice day 10 of the winterer's got to go up in the Dash 7 and get a guided tour around Adelaide Island and a few close by islands, to help us realise where we are, and also to aid in the planning of winter trips which will be happening in a little over a months time. I spied with my little eyes quite a few brilliant looking places for ski mountaineering. Some of the views are pretty breath-taking on a good day. I'll have to work on my fitness.

Here me, Simon Herniman, Riet, Penny (summer dentist) and Disco Pete (don't ask) get ready to skin up Stork Bowl to where the brightest sun is in the picture.

This is a spot quite close to the previous picture, looking the opposite direction. The snow, which has been receeding like the hairline of a serial bleacher, reveals amazing bright orange rocks (i guess there's lots of iron in there, but i haven't asked a rockologist yet). Anyway, it looks great in the dipping sun.

Simon and Penny getting close to the top of the safe part of Stork before the crevasses start. In winter i should be able to ski right from the top after loads more snow falls on everything.

Disco Pete (don't ask) went for a jump off the smooth edged cornace at the bottom of Stork Bowl on the last run down, landed hard, snapped off the break on one of his skiis, which came off and calmly began accelerating down the slope towards a bloody great crevasse field and the sea. Thus rendered half-skied and thoroughly cheesed off, he tried to ski mono back to the skiidoos. Bad luck...

A nice sunset at Skiway Col, at the top of the emergency runway (skiway) which the planes use if the crosswind is too high at Rothera. A twin otter got flipped onto it's back during the 2003/4 season in a crosswind so they're really careful now about things like that.

The only known picture of me in the co-pilot's seat in a twin otter in Antarctica in existence. I just put it in because it was pretty exciting being in the jump seat and landing at Fossil Bluff when i took this picture. After we'd refuelled, Doug the pilot took a scenic and topography-hugging route for a while as we headed back towards Rothera. The topography could be described as undulating by an understater.

The order of these photos is slightly skewed in favour of whichever order the computer arranged them in. Here Pete and Riet are skinning up the last bit. You can just see Simon and Penny nearer the botttom.

I went for a wander last night around the point with Matt, and the light was really nice, so here's a few photos of that.

And this last one was pinched from a powerpoint presentation that my boss gave at some point, and i thought i'd throw it in because i keep going on about Fossil Bluff and Halley and Sky Blu, and i forgot that there's no particular reason why you should know where they are! Here's a nice simple map of the Antarctic Peninsula. It's about 2 hrs flight between Rothera and Fossil Bluff, and another 2 to Sky Blu - that gives a bit of a sense of scale. Sky Blu is at 75 degrees South, and the South Pole is roughly where the "a" of "about Fossil Bluff" is in this paragraph.

Anyway, things are going fine here, i should be heading back out to fossil bluff again on Sunday but will mayeb post again before then. Cheers, Rob

Couple of Photos...

2007-02-08T20:52:00.000Z

Hi again, nothing very out of the ordinary (at least not out of my new and slightly odd ordinary) has happened since the last post, but there was a really nice sky towards the Arrowsmith Peninsula to the East, and to the South last night (2nd picture) about midnight so i thought i'd post a couple of pictures. You'll notice that the sun is not far away from setting!

This one was taken by Alistair the doc on Gould Night (when an American marine biology ship came alongside for 1 night a couple of weeks ago). There Matt on guitar (left), Me on other guitar, Riet van der Velde (Belgian chef) on drums, and Matt Brown (dive officer) singing. We are pretty crammed onto the tiny little stage in the sledge store.

My Postal Address

2007-02-04T16:43:00.000Z

Just in case anyone was wondering - it's possible to get post into the Antarctic pretty easily, but only during the summer, which means between November and March. If anyone fancies sending me anything at all then they need to do it in the next 2 weeks at the latest if it's going to get to me this year since it has to get picked up by ship from the Falklands and taken down here...

Rob Webster
Rothera Research Station
c/o British Antarctic Survey Office
Stanley
Falkland Islands (Malvinas)
F1QQ 1ZZ

It would be very nice to get anything at all. Cheers, rob

Some of What? and Where?

2007-02-04T14:26:00.000Z

Hello again! I've had quite a few requests from people interested in where i actually do all this "work" that i claim to be here to do. This varies and most of the little places where we work our little bits of meteorological stuff look really dull in photos so i won't bore you with them. At some point i'll do a post on "recreation" which sounds like something someone who's detained at Her Majesty's pleasure is allowed to do for 1 hour every day. Or something that God did after he'd crumpled up the first Universe and chucked it in his very very large bin. So here are the main rooms that make up my working day:

This is the comms/ops (communications/ operations) tower, which is where the communications guys work from. Its pretty much the comms and planning hub for everything that goes on thats not at the base and quite a bit of the stuff that is. It basically consists of banks of radio equipment and computers, charts and a box of biscuits, wheelie chairs and an almost 360 degree view. There's a balcony running round the edge of the tower which is where i go to do my hourly observations, unless doing them from the top of the hill if specially requested by the pilots (fog can start forming over there and then creep round with little warning).

My desk! Where all the incredibly important worldclass meteorology happens...(?) and also where im writing from now. Notice the trademark two computer screens next to each other which is evidence of professionalism, and the wheels on the bottom of the chair which allow me to get to where im most needed almost instantly, cutting wasted standing up then walking time by up to a half. Note also the clock on the wall. That is there to let us know the time, and the caldendar white board is there to inform us of the date and day of the week, lest we forget where we are in Time's great line...

Here is Ags, my predeccesor sitting at her desk which will shortly become my desk, as it is better than my current one. Points of interest include the 50 bunnyrabbit tails on a string which is draped on the door handle to ward off evil spirits, and the open door, signifying our openness and willingness to come to anyone's aid in times of crisis. It's also so we can get some air in, since none of the windows open.

This bank of slightly ancient computers, with some new ones added is the bulk of the ARIES system (some acronym for something or other.. The "I" is for image i think) which is the satellite tracking system which provides us with about one satellite image an hour of a big chunk of Antarctic, and which is the main tool of the forecaster for dictating aircraft movements on the continent. This system has been giving almost endless problems since i got here, and it keeps breaking in new and ridiculous ways. But we've also installed a new version in the last month which seems to work better. Which is good because it's my responsibility for the next 2 years.

This is our met workshop where we prepare all the instruments and generally try to make things work by moving wires around and cutting things and attaching them to other things. It's usually a bit of a mess but i can safely claim that that's because it gets used a lot...

This is the Physical Sciences Division Engineering Lab, which is where at least some of the electronics gets done. This is also Matt's office, and i'm supposed to be able to cover his job when he's away, like he is at the moment. Which is kind of scary because i know nothing about electronics, and almost nothing about Unix which is the operating system that runs all the servers which are behind my back as i took this picture. These are also my responsibility in Matt's absence. I'm just hoping nothing goes wrong!

Here's the "Met Office" which is where the actual visualizations are for all of the meteorological instruments, and where the actual work of the observer (stroke technician) is done.

And here's Mike the forecaster on the other side of the room, where he looks at cryptic images all day and tells people where they can and can't fly. He gives this info in the daily met briefing at 7.45 every morning. He's a pretty hard-working sort of chap, up at 5 every morning and working till 9 at night or later every day of the week.... Thats why they rotate the forecasters halfway through a summer season.

I've been doing a bit of climbing on the climbing wall recently, and im getting quite a lot better at it - Matt is a very good climber and has been giving me pointers - its pretty satisfying when you make a move that a week ago seemed impossible! Anyway, theres the 1 - 50 challenge (each hold is numbered) and then back again - Matt reckons i'll nail it at some point during the winter with a bit of practice. Might need some more upper arm strength though, although he insists that it's "all technique"...

Here's me having a go. It's great to have little challenges like this to help occupy the quiter times and give you something to focus on. I'm not so sure about transferring to an actual piece of vertical rock hundreds of feet above some more (but this time horizontal) rock though. I think it would hurt quite a bit falling on that. Much better to stick to foam mats at the moment. Or maybe i should think like the people who make those daft t-shirts which say things like "it's not the fall that kills you - its the sudden stop at the end" and have "no fear".... easier said than felt.

Note: Old Posts...

2007-01-26T21:49:00.000Z

Hi again - ive had a few people wondering why ive been lazy enough to only have written a few blog entries... Its because the blogger site shifts posts older than a certain amount to a different page which you can get to using the link to "Older Posts" at the bottom of the page on the right.... Just in case anyone had started reading recently and didn't realise! Rob

p.s. Had a Burns Night last night, i played the haggis in and then me and Tristan (Comms manager and genuine Shetlander) played for a slightly shambolic but obviously enjoyable couple of hours of dancing, and the speeches were pretty damn good too. Hopefully someone had a camera there and took some good picsa and i'll post them in a bit....

A Day Trip in "The Field"...

2007-01-23T23:37:00.000Z

Hi again after what seems like a very long absence from doing the blog - me and some of the rest of us met people have now installed 3 automatic weather stations ....... got to go. Again! Anyway, ill set some pics to upload and come back to the descriptions later! rob

edit: Now it is later, a few days later in fact, things are still very busy and it's surprisingly hard to find a good time to do the blog updates. But here goes...

This is a view from Bravo Charlie, one of the four Rothera based twin otter aircraft. This place seems very familiar now, but the back of my hand will have to fight to be known as well after 2 years here... The ship moored up at the wharf (left middle of the picture) is the HMS Endurance who were providing accomodation for The Royal Female during her Royal stay on our little bit of rock. We got thrashed at football by them 5-0 (or maybe 6-0: the facts of the case are these, and they are disputed) - they had proper strips and had apparently left trails of silk through the defenses of the Argentinian and Chilean armies, and some other Antarctic bases en route... Personally i think they were taking it all a bit too seriously! Anyway, The pic is taken as we left Rothera to go out to a place on the Ronne Iceshelf called variously Site 8, Limbert, or Shelf to take down and old and increasingly knackered automatic weather station and put up a new one. And the great BAS logistical machine was revealed to me in stages over the next few days as pilots frantically dashed around over an area the size of western Europe picking people up, dropping them in middles of nowhere, digging, digging, digging, cacheing fuel drums, moving fuel drums, pumping and using fuel drums, dragging fuel drums, digging fuel drums out of lots of snowdrifts, unsticking fuel drums attached to other fuel drums with ice, clearing runways and disposing of old fuel drums. Basically it means that once you're away from Rothera, there is no "working day", there are more like working minutes, and they include every minute that you are awake apart from meals and coffee breaks. I didn't have to work that hard, but some of the people who left Sky Blu when we got in had been working in shifts 24hrs a dayt to keep the blue ice runway clear of snow to allow planes to get in. And that means keeping all the snow off an area 800m long and 35m wide clean of snoiw, which there happens to be quite a lot of in the part of the world. It was very interesting anyway. So Ags and I spent the night at Sky Blu, then most of the next day before being flown out to site 8 to do our work, which we finished at 2 in the morning, then slept in the back of the otter before flying back to Sky Blu in the morning.

These pictures are just a few of the many different nice-looking sea ice forms that we flew over on our way to fossil bluff, a re-fuelling and stopover poinbt for more southerly field operations (I'll get a decent map picture at some point and put little arrows on it to make it a bit clearer where im talking about...). The bottom one is meltwater pools on top of sea ice.

(This picture really belongs in the Stork Bowl post a few weeks ago. It's me coming down in the fairly nice powder, taking by Ags who was up there digging holes in snow for a training video on snow shelters).

This is a few from (basically, of) Sky Blu - its at 76 degrees South, so its pretty serious - almost as far south as Halley. Its at about 5000 feet, so the mountain you see in the background are called nunataks which just means the top of a mountain sticking out of a vast quantity and depth of snow and ice. The red building is called a melon hut, and its where the cooking and storage facilities are for Sky Blu personnel, as well as the communications equipment (HF radio, satellite phone for emergencies) and weather station display panel. Apart from a few other nunataks close by, there is nothing around here for hundreds of miles except snow and ice...

Some more nunataks, from the plane heading over to Site 8. I think this picture gives a better sense of the buriedness of the mountains - thousands of feet down to sea level... The upper picture is just some nice cracking of the snow on a hill, the bottom bit dirtorted by the aeroplane window that looks quite good.

One of the Twin Otters having just landed on the blue ice (icerink) runway at Sky Blu.

Me operating the snow blower to get rid of snow drifts at the "fuel farm" so that we could get in with skidoos to tow the barrels to the runway apron (parking for aircraft) for refuelling - it's a little bit surreal standing with a normal sort of petrol pump handle with it stuck in the side of a big red aeroplane...

Here im helping to clear snowdrifts off the runway - the problem is that if theres no wind, the blown snow lands back on the runway and you have to blow it again. But if there is wind to take the blown snow away, then its likiely that there will be more drifting so its a pretty constant concern for all sky blu people.

Here's me relaxing outside my sleeping place - Chris Drurie, one of the artists down here, built it with help from a few of the Sky Blu people, and it was brilliant in every way, except that it didn't have wi-fi and i didn't have a laptop, and i didn't want wi-fi or a laptop anyway. The first night i spent in there was interesting because it was pretty cold and there were a few holes in between the blocks, so me and Simon (Navy pilot/radio operator) woke up with snow over our sleeping bags. Luckily it was so cold that the snow just brushed off... Then the second night Simon filled in the gaps and it was a brilliant place to sleep, although not quite as refined as the inuit versions with their raised sleeping platforms and entrenched entrance tunnel, but it was as good as a tent and more satisfying!

Installing an AWS on Larsen Icesheet

2007-01-16T11:13:00.000Z

On saturday i got my first flight over antarctic soil! Myself, cathy and matt headed over to the Larsen Ice Shelf, (just near to the Bawden ice rise if you're looking at a map) which stretches over a vast area and is clinging on to the peninsula with freezing cold fingers and trying to avoid the fate of it's more northerly cousin Larsen A, which broke up in 1995, and Larsen B which famously disintegrated over the course of a few weeks in 2002. This tendency towards huge bits of antarctic floating glacial ice breaking into tiny pieces is thought now to be a symptom of very fast warming over the antarctic peninsula over the last 50 years (approximately 2.5 degrees C). We were installing a new AWS (automatic weather station) and getting rid of the old one which has been raised in previously years but is now obsolete. It was pretty strange to be on a piece of snow covered ice that stretched as far as you could see in every direction, and it was a demonstartion of the power of the GPS that we found this little speck of dust on the monstrous sheet of paper straight away, landed trailing skiis (just touching the surface with the skiis on the plane) to test the integrity of the suface, then taking off again to come full circle and land again in the ruts. You might think that there wouldn't be any ruts on an iceshelf, but it was so ridiculously warm, and the sun so uninhibited by clouds that the surface was crusty and soft underneath and we regularly fell through the relative outer solidity into softer stuff below, up to our knees which made certain aspects of AWS erection more difficult than imagined...

Anyway, enough of these words! On to the visual compartments containing many more words than this feeble blurb...

A bit of the Larsen Ice Sheet, with cloud shadows. The closest rock sticking out of the ice is actually Francis Island which is about 100 miles from the edge of the ice. Behind that are the peninsular mountains and Rothera is on the other side of them.

The twin otter at the AWS site - it's a really beauitiful piece of machinery! You can see how deep the ruts are that it has carved during taxiing.

Here's me putting some bolts in to fix on the solar panel which charges the two batteries which are buried in the snow inside a metal case.

Here's me inside the otter heading back from the site - OK it could be a much better photo, and i am really a lot happier than i look - thats the concentration involved in trying to take a picture of yourself whilst being thrown around in the back of a plane full of cargo boxes. But it shows some of the peninsular hills on the Bowman coast which was pretty great.

Here's a photo which has turned out pretty well considering the windows of the planes are all scratched by whatever it is that most commonly scratches the windows of twin otters in Antarctica, and it was generally quite hard to get good photos through them. At some point i'll get to be a co-pilot, which basically means sitting in the jump seat in the tiny cockpit and looking out through the front windows. Which will be nice...

I've got to post this now as i've got to restart my computer for work purposes, but i'll post some more pictures later on once all the madness dies down...

Oh, i don't think i mentioned it too much, but Princess Anne is here for a few days and will be wandering with intent to chat later on in the day, everyones a bit stressed because the ITN people are sneaking about and the HMS Endurance is moored at the wharf and everything has to be itinerised (?) and time has to be locked down and tamed, everything chronologised (Dave!) to the nearest ridiculously small time period, everyone sweating more than normal and normal work kind of being put on the back burner, and kind of getting harder because it doesn't cook so well back there. Anyway, got to dash, cheers, rob...

On The Telly..

2007-01-12T17:01:00.000Z

Very quick: not much time! Just to let you know that an ITN news team are here at the moment, and they'll be doing some live broadcasts during next week on their 18.30 and 22.30 news programs... If you have a look you might just see me on there.... But if not (and i am pretty camera shy!) then it'll give a good impression of what the area and base is like.

At the moment i'm on standby every day to get flown out to one of our peninsular automatic weather station sites to install a new station. If and when i go, i'll make sure to take lots of pics and post what happens. cheers, rob

Skiing!

2007-01-07T16:35:00.000Z

Hello, i'm making a quick blog entry today because we're very busy in the met department because everything is going a little bit haywire and the forecaster is demanding heads and solutions... But I had yesterday afternoon off and it was a pretty stunning day so me and a few other folk skinned up to Vals and then took a skiidoo (after going back to base to get some harnesses) out of the "recreational area limit" and into the far more exciting "technical travel area", with a bit of supervision from Kirk, one of the GAs that's been here for 2 years so he knows his stuff. We then got onto ski mountaineering skiis and skinned up to a shoulder of a hill called Middle Stork, where we could ski into a beautiful bowl (Stork Bowl) with snow that was almost powdery! Which is a skiers perfect activity, pretty much... It took about 20mins of uphill for 20 seconds of downhill, but it was well worth it. I did that 4 times and then headed back to base on the skidoo absolutely knackered but chuffed with the first proper skiing on Antarctica that i've done so far... Here's a few pictures:

Stork bowl from near the bottom, with Matt starting the trudge back up to the top for another run. Apparently in winter you can climb right to the top of Middle Stork and ski off there...

Lowrie (outgoing doctor) and matt getting ready to go up for the first time. The sledge on the skidoo isn't needed but Kirk has it as a prop because he's filming a big series of Antarctic survival training videos, and just over the cornice in front of them, he and Ags were building a huge snowhole...

Me at the top of the bowl looking pretty smug i think! Not a bad view from up there...

Kirk wandering back to the skidoo after a hard days hole-digging... Maybe there'll be some better pictures that someone else took that i could post in future. Anyway, back to work. rob

Met Team....

2007-01-01T22:51:00.000Z

edit: also, if any of the Halley folk are reading who i knew from cambridge or ship journeys - Great to see you've finally got onto glacia firma! All the best for the new year...

edit II: for people reading who don't know, the Shackleton that i did the first leg of journey on has been having a spot of ice-related bother recently, having had to smash through metres thick ice for weeks to get into a place on the ice-shelf where they can unload their cargo and actually get to where they're going to be living for the next year... Unstoppable forces and immovable objects...! Have a look at Dave, Tamsin, Richard or Dean's excellent blogs to see how they're getting on (linked on this page -->)

Real Original Post

Hello, and Happy New Year! Last night we had our hogmanay celebrations in the sledge store, where i was part of the band which entertained pretty successfully (even if i do say so myself!) for a couple of hours before the bells, and everyone generally had a pretty superb night! Pictures are thin on the ground though due to the darkness of the venue, and the unwillingness of the partygoers to risk serious injury to valuable photographic equipment due to wayward and occasionally extreme revelry. I don't think ive ever used the word "revelry" for any purpose previously, nor will i ever again...

Anyway, i'll try to dig up some in the next week from the shared drive, but for now i'll just post our "met team" photo, courtesy of Alistair the resident healthsmith and all-round nice chap:

The cirrus in the sky makes for quite a nice effect i think you'll agree. Left to Right - Me, Matt Balmer (electronic engineer really, but met trained), Mark Maltby (matt's predeccesor, now gone to Halley), Ags (whom i am replacing), Cathy Moore (my boss!). When it comes to the winter, the 3 to the right will be gone, and it'll just be me and matt to run the whole weather malarky. Wish us luck?

Just heading to bed...

2006-12-29T01:54:00.000Z

I've been on observations since 7 this morning and its now nearing midnight - am pretty knackered but its such a nice evening that i thought i'd stick up just a few more photos before turning in...

More Rothera Photos...

2006-12-28T21:50:00.000Z

Matt (electronic engineer that I trained with in cambridge) and Ags (whom i am replacing) getting ready to ski at Vals yesterday. The fresh snow was getting a bit heavy so we had to piste a 10m width with the skidoos for a nicer surface. Not much like hard work...

The caboose at Vals, where we had a cup of coffee after a few runs. The snow sculpture there is supposed to be a female rabbit. I was not responsible for this in any way...

A view from the top of Vals NW to Stork with ski pole and glove. I don't know where the other two went.

This is a view down Admiral House, which is the accomodation block for almost everyone on the base, it's really pretty comfortable too. Just inside the door on the left is a table tennis table and laundry, and my shared room is the first red window on the lighter green bit of the building. This is looking pretty much due South and the hill you can see is actually an island called Jenny Island (1900ft, 33kms away - i need to know all this stuff to work out visibility and cloud base height...). It's a bloody nice day today! I'm still on hourlies at 7 tonight because the planes are still flying but im going to head to the music room for a practice with the "band" for new years eve celebrations. Bye for now. rob

descriptions coming later...

Rothera Photos!

2006-12-26T12:26:00.000Z

Hi, sorry for the delay but ive finally put up some photos of where i now call my home... We just celebrated christmas day yesterday and the chefs did themselves proud, producing and exquisite array of culinary delights, including the oft forgotten "bread display" featuring crazy and diabolical breads from the oven of Cyril, our resident Frenchman. Cyril had the room in fits after dinner with a faux queens speech, having a dig a most of the management and our royal visitor (the princess royal, don't really know anything about her but shes coming for a visit in a couple of weeks time but hopefully i'll keep well out of her way). The seating plan for that visit has been released, and luckily i am miles away from the royal chatter - my predecessor Ags has not been so lucky, being directly in the firing line across Her Majesty. Is she called so? Or is the majestic adjective reserved only for the pinnacle of royal greatness, our glorious Queen Elizabeth? If anyone could enlighten me regarding the appropriate title for Princess Anne i would be very much obliged. Anyway, on to some photographs:

A view of the back of Bransfield House, where all of our offices, dining room, bar, library, phone rooms, and so on are. Theres also the communications or operations tower - basically a small air traffic control tower which is the sticky up mustrad coloured bit. This is where I go to do some of my observations, the others being done there and also at the top of the little hill (100ft) behind me as i take this photo. The point in that is to see over to the other side of the point to check for sneaky bits of fog that could be hiding at sea level ready to sneak around to Rothera and cause chaos with the planes. In the front there are a tiny fraction of the mountains of cargo boxes that still need sorting out...

This one shows the snow ramp, with the start of reptile ridge at the top. In the foreground is a little bit of the gravel runway, and the buildings are part of Admiral's House, where i have my room. The tracks heading up the ramp are skidoo and snocat tracks which are heading up to the ramp and then about 1km to the right in a big traverse ending at Vals, (after Val Disere in the French Alps) which is our little ski area.

This is a view almost North, showing the aptly named North Cove, complete with small and some larger bergs. The building site bit in the right is our new Bransfield House which is going to be a complete replacement to the building im currently sitting and drinking coffee, which will be decommisioned in a few years. The new one should (should...) be finished by the winter.

This is our largest aircraft, the four propellor Dash-7, which is the mainstay of our cargo and personnel shifting work between, well here and pretty much anywhere else. It has been the cause of most of the problems this year because it has been constantly faulty and has meant that some people have had projects cancelled and others have had to change their plans. In this picture it is taking a load of people in from Stanley who were meant to be here much earlier. Hopefully the problems are sorted now.

Here's a pic that i took at the top of Vals, while trying out my new telemarks. The little black cube thing down at the bottom is the caboose with loads of emergency "stuff" in it, including hot chocolate and biscuits, so you can have a piste-side brew... The mountains to the right and across the water are the hills of the actual Antarctic Peninsula, whereas we are on Adelaide Island.

Heres Jim the Boatman in traditional Christmas ceremonial hat, driving a skidoo whilst running our shuttle service to the top of Vals. The rope trailing behind has a couple of loops in it to take up 2 people at a time.

This view is from the bottom of Vals, looking pretty much North to a set of 3 hills called Stork. The col between the two hills there is the top of a bowl (Stork Bowl...) which is hidden from view but apparently offers brilliant skiing of a slightly more technical nature than the easy Vals. You have to be accompanied by a field GA (general assistant) who are basically the outdoor experts employed to make sure no-one does anything stupid in the harsh environments around here.

The weather was great and ridiculously warm (up above 3 degrees some days, and feeling warm in the sun) but i woke up today (26th) to heavy snow and there are already 3 inches of the stuff lying on everything. It's halted flying for the moment, we'll have to see what happens...

OK, thats all for the update today, but i'll try and get more regular ones in from now on. It's all becoming quite normal, to live amongst ice bergs and 8000ft mountains, next to a runway and walk past bright red aircraft in the hangar to release balloons into the sky 4 times a week, to ride around in little 4x4 golf buggies and skidoos and communicate via VHF radios. Well, not really, it's pretty bizarre, but i guess the impact has been lessened by all the strange stuff that happened in the 6 weeks it took to get here. If i'd just arrived from the UK in 48hrs, i would have been pretty crazy methinks. Still i know that stuff which will quickly become normal for me will still be interesting for people at home so i'll make an effort to get the blog going smoothly again. Bye for now, Rob...

Rothera!

2006-12-17T13:17:00.000Z

Hello everyone keeping up - i have now finally arrived at Rothera, and it's pretty amazing! We've had beautiful weather for the last 3 days and the point and surrounding areas have shown themselves to be stunning. I am extremely busy at the moment with induction training and relief (getting cargo off the ship), and I haven't got my laptop approved for connection yet so i apologise for the relative rubbishness of the blog just recently and for the next week or so... In half an hour i'm going to be starting my field skills course which covers a lot of techniques for staying safe in the middles of nowhere - cooking, tent use, crevasse rescue, rope techniques, skidoo maintenance and such like, then i'll be staying up on a nearby hill tonight in a pyramid tent. I have some good photos which i'll get up as soon as i can to give a better idea of what i can see! Cheers, rob

......?

2006-12-14T20:39:00.000Z

Getting the RIB into Vernadsky

Glassy Sea with Ice

A Taste of the Antarctic Peninsula....

Another One

Lots of sea ice

edit II - photos are from other people for the aforementioned reason
edit - internet connection is playing up - photos to follow!

Today has been absolutely, indescribably great, so i'm not going to use too many words! Knowing that we would be passing through some of the most stunning scenery and narrow channels in the peninsula, i got up at 4am and got straight up on the monkey island, where i was amazed to see that the snow that was falling only 4 hours before had vanished and been replaced by sunshine and atmospheric cloudscapes. I was up there from 4 until 12 for lunch, and took some great photos. But the curse of tiny technologies hit me this afternoon and my SD card has been rendered completely unreadable - my pc won't even see it and the techie guys on here say it's gone. So i was pretty upset about that, so don't have any photo of the superb sights of most of the day. In the afternoon though i changed to another card and got some pictures. Summing up the day - channels, sheer cliffs, avalanches, whales (a few in the distance), seals (2), penguins (lots), sun, icebergs, RIB, Ukrainians, vodka, pork fat, technological infuriations, sea ice, open water, old speckled hen, rest! The Ukrainians bit was a visit to Vernadsky Station, formerly the British Faraday Research Station, and welcoming hosts for a short 30 min visit to wander around. Anyway, i can't do justice to it so here's a few photos which give an idea, and hopefully i'll find some good ones from earlier to post later... Tomorrow (and i can't quite get my head around it at the moment...) we arrive at Rothera Point. Cheers, rob

Across The Drake Passage...

2006-12-13T20:04:00.000Z

Hi again, we've completed our crossing of the notorius Drake Passage, the part of the Southern Ocean between Tierra del Fuego and the Antarctic Peninsula! It's supposed to be the most dangerous and terrifying stretch of water on the planet, but we've had a smooth ride all the way and sighted the South Shetland Islands yesterday through low stratus and generally obstructive drizzly cloud. But it was bona fide Antarctic territory and it was bloody exciting! In fact the last few days has been full of firsts: I saw my first bit of floating ice, my first chinstrap penguin (playfully leaping out of the water as they torpedoed alongside), my first view of proper antarctica, and arrival inside the zone officially described (by lawyers) as "Antarctica". This is not to be confused with the Antarctic, which is the continent itself, or the Antarctic Circle, which we have still not crossed (66 degrees South) and which defines the most northerly places at which you still have days where the sun does not set in the summer and does not rise in the winter... There! A whole heap of firsts... And the first time i've been truly cold for ages...

The picture above is of all we could see of Elephant Island, made famous by the incredible Shackleton story and which lived up to my mental image of it as a gateway to some kind of freezing cold alternative hell! If anyone reading doesn't know the story of the aptly named Endurance expedition then i would highly recommend that you read "South" by Shackleton himself. It's certainly very poignant for me to see this place as i found the account in "South" very powerful.

Today (13th) we stopped off the coast if King George Island, and sent a RIB (rigid inflatable boat) ashore to pick up a couple of other people going to Rothera who had been working on science there for the last 3 weeks.

Here's a view of a small bit of the island with the ship's crane which has just hauled the RIB out of the water. Then it was on with the journey, passing along the southern coasts of the South Shetland Islands, with fairly poor visibilty, for the rest of today. At about 6pm we passed about 10 miles away from Deception Island, a horseshoe shaped island with only a tiny little entrance gap which is still used as a natural harbour ocassionally. It is whats left of a volcano and has hot springs inside it where you can swim, but unfortunately we don't have time to go in!

I'm going to bed early tonight to get up about 5am tomorrow because we will be entering the famous Lemaire Channel, a tight little strait with towering cliffs on either side. I'm hoping for an end to the rubbish visibility we've had so far - Antarctica is there, but stubbornly refusing to remove it's veil. Hopefully i'll get some great pictures and will post them tomorrow. We've been making good time, and i should be arriving in my new home in two days time now...

Pub Quiz Music Round...

2006-12-07T01:01:00.000Z

edit: (8th December) : For some reason the link below isn't working, but you can get it from my website front page by going here if you are so inclined. There's also another new one with crazy beat structure called Manatas. For no particular reason other than it's memorable to me...!

We had a pub quiz about a week ago on the Shackleton, although it seems like longer... It was organised by Richard and Tamsin, compered by Dave, and was a great success. My contribution was a music round where i took bits out of popular tunes that would be well known and messed around with them to make a 4 minute clip with them. The idea was to identify the tunes, a bit like an audio wordsearch... If anyone fancies having a go the round is here to download (right click and save as...) . There are 14 tunes in there, not my usual style it has to be said, but it went down well. Answers on an e-mail postcard, and i'll post them in a week or so. rob

Falkland Islands III - Volunteer Point

2006-12-07T00:10:00.000Z

Today was amazing! A small group of folk from the JCR decided to fork out for a tour to one of the most renowned spots on the islands, a place on East Falkland called Volunteer Point. After a 4x4 ride for almost 3 hrs over gravel roads and peat moor, we got to an absolutely stunning beach with more of the crisp cold blue and brilliant white sands that were at Gypsy Cove. But this was on a new scale entirely....

1500 King penguins, a Gentoo penguin breeding colony, and heaps of Magellenic penguins, relaxing in their burrows or larking about at the edge of the sea. This was very impressive - I spent the full 4 hours that we were there with no regard for time whatsoever, watching and photographing the various birds. This was a geographical anomaly even more than a temporal one: Look east and you have vast white sandy stretches and ice-blue clear and shallow waters with penguins all over the shop. Look the other way and you have the Sutherland in Scotland, peat moors, desolation, rock runs, sheep, lochs, and... literally 1000s of penguins. Very bizarre and a very special place to visit. It was definately worth the 6 hours of driving! The weather, again, amazing. This is very unusual for the Falklands i'm told...

Here's me with a suspicious looking Gentoo, hanging about the waters edge looking like trouble and wandering apparently aimlessly...! I bought a tripod in Stanley yesterday and got seom good use out of it as i fired off 300 photos, and i'm definately getting better at taking them....

Here's a King penguin doing something or other, and looking pretty superb whilst doing it. If you click on these pics you should be able to get slightly bigger versions. On this one you can see the texture of the feathers really well. Here are a few other pictures to give you an idea of what the place looked like and how packed it was with wildlife. We also were lucky enough to see a sealion coming in and stalking the Magellanics, another first for me. Still enjoying the warmth as much as possible as it's about to get very very different.... We sail on Thursday 7th December. It should take about 2 weeks into Rothera, with stops for science stuff on the way down. Will try and resume normal blogging until Rothera, weather permitting of course! We're about to go into the worst seas on the planet. Rob

Falkland Islands II - Gypsy Cove

2006-12-06T23:46:00.000Z

Second day in the Islands and the weather was even better - hottish and almost windless, so myself, Tamsin, Dave and the cadet Alistair headed out along the coast to the south and east of Stanley to go to a place called Gypsy Cove where we were promised a colony of Magellanic penguins. We got them and loads more - the place was absolutely outstanding! A pretty much Carribean beach with heaps of penguins, crystal clear baltic waters and crisp white sand, the cove forming a natural wind break and gathering wildlife together. We pretty much spent the whole day here, taking hundreds of photos and sunbathing before walking the couple of hours back into town. I even had a fairly quick swim in the freezing water, and there were Magellanics ricocheting about just under the surface nearby and leaping out of the water in dolphinesque displays of aquabatics (...?).

There were plenty other types of birds here too, some ducks (above), the bright red-breasted military starling, lots of little yellow finches and the ubiquitous upland goose, the bird that lends it's name to BAS's lodging house in Stanley.

Here are a few of the Magellanic penguins, my first ever sighting of a penguin so an exciting day! These were very friendly and not particularly bothered by human nuisance or my intrusive lens. They're pretty small, about a foot and a half tall, and they live underground in burrows that you have to be careful not to collapse on the descent to the sand.

Here's a picture of me enjoying the delightful heat and still reeling from the surprise of how much great stuff there actually is to be had in good weather here. You probably didn't expect pictures like this from me at this stage - neither did I...

On a different note, it was also a sad day for me as i've now moved to the JCR, BAS's science flagship, and the Shackleton is on it's way to Signy Island in the South Orkneys, and i've had to leave Dave and Tamsin and other friends on there who i'd got to know really well since the start of our training on 10th July. They are now added to the list of people who i'll miss during my Rothera time. All the best!

Falkland Islands - Mt. Tumbledown and Stanley

2006-12-06T21:38:00.000Z

Hello again after a hefty absence due to changing from one ship at Mare Harbour in the Falkland Islands to a new one, the James Clark Ross, at Stanley. So now i'm settled into my new home (for 2 weeks) and have finally got the laptop reconnected to the internet, my regular updates on this blog will continue.....

The Falkland Islands have been bathed in beautiful sun for the whole period of our trans-shipment stay, providing an excellent 3 days of exploring to silence those who have complained about the monochrome and dull Islands that they have experienced on previous occasions. The first day i got a bus into Stanley (about 1 hrs ride on half tarmac-half crushed rock roads) with a few other FIDS and we had a look round the capital, a quaint little town of 2500 inhabitants comprising well-spaced and well-kept wooden houses with attractive coloured roofs and walls. The people were friendly, and recommended a day's walk out to a few "mountains" about 4 miles inland - Tumbledown Mountain and Mount William. Both were teeming with wildlife, but since the hills were important battlegrounds during the 1982 war there are still minefields cordoned off and military debris scattered here and there to keep you thinking... The photo is of me at a memorial cross on the top of Tumbledown, the clarity of sky and air providing an amazing panorama of the barren landscape. There were also quite a lot of interesting plants, none of which I could identify, but i thought this one was maybe an orchid of some kind...?

Updates...

2006-12-04T20:29:00.000Z

Hi everyone who's following the blog. Just a little one to let you know why i haven't updated for a while - I'm in the Falkland Islands now, and since the other FIDS (BAS people) joined at Montevideo it has been extremely packed on the the Shackleton, and i haven't had my laptop plugged in. Also the internet was down for a few days. So it's been pretty hectic, and i've now completed my move from the Shackleton at Mare Harbour, to the James Clark Ross at Stanley Harbour. Also have managed to get two days with lots of walking around the Stanley area in, which i'll post about in detail when i get my laptop connected here in the next few days.... Cheers, rob

Leaving Montevideo...

2006-11-27T20:29:00.000Z

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:

Punta del Este....

2006-11-27T13:16:00.000Z

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.

Montevideo....

2006-11-27T12:36:00.000Z

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

Dolphins and the Setting Sun...

2006-11-20T23:06:00.000Z

A quick post now - just seen an incredible display of dolphin acrobatics - myself, dave, richard the doctor and tamsin were out on the fo'c'sle having an after dinner drink, when we saw a few dolphins in the distance. Within minutes they were right on the bow, about 20 of them (bo

ttlenose we think but will need to confirm) were playing back and forth and leaping out of the water, easily keeping speed with the Shackleton's 10 knots. Here are a few photos i took, with no zoom so you can se how close they really were! The first picture shows richard and dave having a beer and seagazing, then a few pics of the dolphins (i took about 50 photos but only a few turned out nicely. If you click on them you should be able to get a little bigger version of them. Then as an extra bonus we got an amazing sunset straight afterwards! We're about 30 degrees South now, still tracking the coast of Brazil. There are quite a lot of little fishing boats dotted about the horizon, and a huge military excercise circling us with the Brazilian Nazy. Just another day...?

Bye for now. Keep the e-mails coming! Sorry to the folk i haven't replied to yet, i will do eventually. Rob

That Which Is Truly Pleasing...

2006-11-19T20:38:00.000Z

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

Whalefish!

2006-11-18T19:11:00.000Z

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

having another barbecue tonight so im going to head up to the helideck and get some food. cheers, rob

Fernando De Noronha Archipelago

2006-11-14T19:38:00.000Z

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.

Plus, very soon we'll be moving to 2 hours behind GMT which will move that observation to an even more difficult hour...

Crossing The Line...!

2006-11-14T18:27:00.000Z

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

Before...

2006-11-11T20:55:00.000Z

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!

Re: Comments...

2006-11-09T13:41:00.000Z

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).

Forgot About the Canaries!

2006-11-09T10:46:00.000Z

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...

Cape Verde Islands...

2006-11-09T10:07:00.000Z

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

Madeira...

2006-11-05T14:52:00.000Z

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...

Boat Trip to Vigo / Painters Painting...

2006-11-02T16:07:00.000Z

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

First Leg...

2006-10-31T16:39:00.000Z

Hello all! After all the waiting - time alternately stretching and shrinking, the moment to leave has finally come! After a mammoth drive down from Scotland my Mum and Dad took me to the rundown port of Immingham to join the RRS Ernest Shackleton and to have a look around. Satisfied that it was a decent sort of place to spend 5 weeks bobbing halfway round the globe, they left on Saturday 28th October, and i got settled into my cabin for the journey. Until i get to Montevideo in Uruguay in about 3 weeks, i'll have this place all to myself - not too shabby i think!

So mixed feelings as i sail away for the best part of 3 years. I'll miss family and friends, the landscape, the music, the pubs, the real ale, the warmth, and a whole pallette of naturally occuring colours. But i don't doubt that each of these will not just retain but will increase in their importance to me during my winter of minimal discontent...

On the ship, i will not merely be lounging around ringing service bells and growing in size. No, there is work to be done, albeit only for half an hour in every six! Here's me on the bridge with the staples of a meteorological observer's diet - barometers and thermometers, and a good pair of glasses for sky-gazing. Me and the other observers Dave and Tamsin (whose fine blogs are available from a link at the top right of this page) will be doing these observations to warm us up for the job lying in wait in Antarctica. That's all for now! Cheers, Rob

First post the past...

2006-09-25T15:01:00.000Z

This is hopefully going to turn out to be an account of my time travelling to the Antarctic and the duration of my working stay at the British Antarctic Survey's Rothera Research Station on the Antarctic Peninsula. It will be punctuated by pictures and illustrated by words and perhaps the odd unusual fact. These are my intentions...

Since the 10th of July I have been being "prepared" at BAS Cambridge through a variety of training events, from meteorological observations in Cornwall to mast climbing in Somerset and abseiling and rope work in Derbyshire. Interspersed with periods of real work, you understand.

Now my blog has started properly i will endeavour to keep it updated as an informative and possibly even entertaining document - with lots of pictures because they are free to take and are worth a thousand times as much as words and and don't need to be shaped into sentences. OK, that's the introduction done... i hope this diary will be of interest to anyone who knows me or is generally an Antarctic enthusiast! The photos will become less green and will first go blue and then white...