“For general information the ship is about to change course, I would suggest everyone holds on. I repeat the ship is about to change course, please hold on.”
Ha, I love living in a moving house! Admittedly I’m less keen when the sill under my window fills with water and then discharges dirty salt/rain water with bits of cracked off paint in it all over my bed. Some might say it was my own damn fault for not closing the window properly after pretending to be a ninja, but I’m only a girl, so how could I possibly know it would be a problem….
Anyway, it has been a busy few days since we left Stanley as we have been restocking the bases on Bird Island and South Georgia. Whilst it was pretty awesome watching the cargo being shifted from ship to boat and then to land using big cranes (who doesn’t love cranes?!), I did spend a lot of time worrying that I may be called upon to actually do my job at some point. Moving boats, moving sea, heavy loads and a tight schedule make a slightly concerning combination. However, the deck crew have clearly done this more than a couple of times before and all went well – lots of aching shoulders and bruises but nothing for me to deal with. On the other hand, a professional masseur would have been far more useful! Sadly the cranes can’t do everything and lots of man-handling of fuel drums and boxes is still required – lots of work for everyone on board and very long days, especially for the deck crew. On the plus side, hard hats and orange boiler suits were required which always makes me a bit happy (simple pleasures etc!)
Boat, crane and Bird Island
Bird Island is an amazing place – like some kind of lost world, with wildlife absolutely everywhere! Now I’m rather fond of seals, with their lovely big eyes and flippers, so I will admit that I had ignored all warnings about the ferocious fur seals on Bird Island, and instead assumed it was all exaggerated nonsense. How can seals be scary? Big eyes. Flippers. Cute noises. Oh how wrong I was. It turns out that fur seals are NOTHING like your average UK seal and they really, really don’t like people invading their patch of beach or rolling oil drums down the jetty. And they’re big. And they move FAST! After a rather close call with a particularly grumpy male (embarrassingly squealing like a girl and running to take cover behind someone with a stick was involved), I have developed a healthy respect for them and am slightly regretting offering to help with the pup-weighing on South Georgia. I may have to find myself some important medical stuff to do on those days! Luckily, and to be honest rather surprisingly, no one was bitten. This also made me happy.
This guy REALLY did not appreciate a digger invading his beach
Penguins and seals and a white bird whose name I've forgotten
After completing relief at Bird Island it was off to South Georgia for more fun and frolics involving boats and cranes. The weather was not kind to us and the island was shrouded in cloud for the first day with intermittent drizzle meaning that everything in cardboard boxes got wet – for information Becks boxes do pretty well in the rain (German engineering and all that) whereas St Miguel are RUBBISH! I had a brief look at the surgery, which is ridiculously massive and scared me a bit. However, it will be nice to have everything out and ready to go, rather than lashed down and packed away. Also, opening cupboards without having the entire contents pour out onto my head will no doubt be quite a novelty after 4 months at sea and will probably take some getting used to. My time on the island was mostly spent unpacking food and drink so the boxes could be loaded back onto the ship, but I did have a quick wander around the base and it looks most wonderful. However, whilst it was good to see my future home, I’m not ready to leave the ship just yet, so there were no tears when the time came to get back on the boat. Also, I’m not going to be provided with puddings twice daily on the base, unless I make them myself, and this is something that will take some time to adjust to – I may go into mourning some time in January in preparation. A little annoyingly the weather on the second day was absolutely fantastic, but sadly there was no time for shore leave so we just had to admire the mountains, turquoise water and elephants seals lounging around on the beach from the comfort of the ship. In my head I was bouncing around ecstatically (like a small child on Christmas day) at the thought of spending a year there, but I reckon I managed to look outwardly cool, calm and professional. Maybe.
