You’re going to need a bigger boat....

Week three and things here are really starting to spice up! No, I’m just messing.  Things here are the same as they were when I first arrived.  That’s not to say that I’m bored or anything it’s just that nothing of interest has really happened.  Tom left for Fossil Bluff, which is one of Rothera’s satellite bases only open in summer.  In terms of distance it is south of Rothera by about 200-250 miles and is the equivalent of flying from London to Brussels.  Due to being a summer only station it only accommodates four (I say ‘station’ loosely, it is effectively a log cabin built in the sixties).  He left last Monday to work the radios down there and he should be back sometime in the next few days.  Due to the fact that he left before he could train in the tower he is yet to get himself signed off, something that I managed a few days ago.  I am now allowed in the tower Jason Derulo, which is pretty cool as it is a big responsibility looking after up to five aircraft at a time, one of which travels intercontinental.   Not to mention all the diving operations around base and, when needed, fire cover.

 Fire cover sounds like it should be the best thing since sliced bread: you’re all dressed up in your fire fighting clothing, manning the fire truck ready for action, going over your drills in case the moment comes.  That’s what it sounds like it should be.  In reality the clothing you wear looks like it was last used in the 60’s, you feel like an extra on London’s Burning, the boots are one size fits none and are big on me, so for Tom’s size 6 feet I hate to think what would happen if he had to run anywhere!  Also the fire ‘truck’ is more a fire pickup with a few hoses and a barrel of foam onboard, enough to do the job but it’s not red and there’re definitely no flashing lights....

As of yet still no flying for me.  Last year’s Navy Holdovers managed to get a few cheeky flights with the Chief Pilot practising take off and landings on snow with the skis down.  Hopefully Tom and I will get that chance but because the seasons been so delayed due to the new avionics in the Dash everyone is trying like crazy to catch up on flights.  It also doesn’t help when the weather is poor.  I used to think, with regards to flying, that the weather at home could be quite unpredictable and suddenly change; that was until I came down here.  The only way I can describe it is: yo yo weather.  One minute it will be blue skies, the next it will be a complete whiteout with visibility dropping to about 50 metres.  We’ve had a few days down here when there has been no flying at all.  On the subject of the flying down here being different to back at home, we had a very amusing incident with a seal the other day.  When back at home in the UK the dangers of bird strike are well know and bird scaring takes place, here it seems there are bigger animals to worry about.  I was in the tower on flight following when Steve, the MET forecaster, popped up to see what I was up to.  It was then that he pointed out two Elephant seals in the middle of the runway just hanging out.  Great.  Some time later in the afternoon: oh, what’s that?  V-BC calling finals?  Oh dear.  I can imagine the call to Clem, the Hangar manager, telling him we have an ‘obstruction’ the runway.  “Birds is it? I’ll just go scare them with the Gator” “Errmmm, I think you’ll need something a bit bigger than a Gator, Clem...”  For anyone who hasn’t seen an Elephant seal before they are huge!  Easily weighing over a tonne, they are about three times the size of a person.  Also they don’t take kindly to being chased across the runway by a small man in a golf buggy as Clem found out when the seal reared up and started chasing him.  Whilst all this is going on, the Twin Otter, V-BC, has had to do a go around to avoid seal strike.  Not your average day in the office.

Life outside the office the last couple of days has also been entertaining.  Every Saturday we have a three course meal where we dress smartly (shirt and jeans), have our weekly shower and have tablecloths on the table, that’s right tablecloths!  It’s really good fun and is the closest thing I’ll get to a Mess dinner whilst I’m down here, although it’s not the sort of occasion to crack out the Nos 2s.  From what I’ve heard from people who were down here last year it looks like the earliest Tom and I will get to wear our Mess Dress will be New Years Eve.

Another point of interest is the formation of The Dom Savage Experience, an up and coming new band hitting the Rothera music scene.  In all seriousness we aren’t really called The Dom Savage Experience but the name seems to have stuck whilst we have been looking for a new one.  Without blowing our own trumpet (because there isn’t one in the band - whey!), we are pretty good.  So far we have myself on guitar, Ross on bass and Reit on drums.  Unfortunately we are yet to find a singer and I have reluctantly stepped in until we find someone better, which won’t be hard.  So far we have learnt a handful of songs including: Muse – Plug in Baby, Wolfmother – Joker and the Thief, and The Raconteurs – Steady as She Goes.  The aim is to play a set at the New Year’s Party that is held in the hangar with other live bands and a few guys dj-ing, although depending on how the practice goes we’ll see if that comes to fruition.....



Our residence for the night

It’s been over a week since I last posted on here and about the same since I arrived in Antarctica.  Apologies to those who have been badgering me for posts!  These past few days have been extremely busy, filled with briefings, meetings talks and practical lessons.  It’s been busy but at the same time it’s been awesome. 

When we first arrived we encountered some pretty heavy turbulence, which was the worst I’ve ever experience.  It wasn’t so bad that it freaked people out it just made Ian, one of the guys flying down with me, vom all over his sick bag which, for the rest of us, was very amusing.  After we landed we were allocated our cabins which, although small, are very comfortable.  They remind me of the Phase 4 Dartmouth cabins but with en suite and bunk beds.   As it turns out I’m to be sharing the next four months down here with Ian (good job we’re on the ground!) 

At present I have done all of the training I need to do in order to be allowed unrestricted access around the base, which includes skidoo driving and practical field craft.  The main forms of transport around Rothera are Gators or skidoos.  The Gator is a small golf buggy like vehicle used for moving people or small bits and pieces around the base and a skidoo, also known as a ‘doo’, is mainly used for deep field parties moving across the continent for months at a time.  The training we got was simple but effective: push to go forward, push to go backward and if you go too fast you’ll flip’, and that was it.  The guy teaching us, smiler (he never speaks, only smiles and nods), is known at the base as the ‘Doo whisperer’ so we knew we were in good hands. We then had field training to complete which mean going up the Ramp, a large hill opposite the base, onto the plateau behind and camping for the night.  We loaded up a pyramid tent onto our skidoo and took it up to the plateau where we were taught how to construct a basic field position with the tent.  This involved digging a base for the tent to sit in and setting up the HF radio with a set of 5 metre long wires as antenna.  After that we were left to our own devices for the night. Tom and I took our doo further up the mountain side to get some better photos and decided to chow down.  In the rations box, known as a Manfood box, were all sorts of unappetising treats.  All the food is dehydrated so it doesn’t matter about the best before date; the food we were eating expired in 2002.  Yummy.   We decided to go for a three course meal of soup, chilli con carne and oats to finish.  Bad move.  The soup proved to be an interesting choice. After putting one sachet into the water we decided to thicken it with another.  It went instantly from watery to syrupy.  “Awesome, chicken!” Tom exclaimed.  This was powdered soup...  It turned out the ‘chicken’ was congealed lumps of un-dissolved powder.  It was possibly the worst thing ever.  The rest of the food was actually not too bad and I ended up scranning down three other main meals. 

The Ramp with Reptile Ridge at the top



View on the way in to Rothera

The base itself is similar to how I imagined it but not on the same scale.  It’s spread over a far larger area which makes going from work to dinner when there is a 40 knot blizzard blowing a pain in the arse.  Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love the fact that the weather is terrible, it’s just tedious getting soaked through sometimes.  The weather at the start of this season has been pretty bad so far.  This time last year all the snow had melted and people were walking round in shorts in a balmy 5 Celsius!  This year there is so much snow we actually have to dig our way out of our accommodation and some second storey windows are covered in snow.  The temperature here hardly rises above -2 celsius, which some may not think is that cold but when you factor in wind chill from 40-50 knot winds it feels like -10.  I’m quite glad that the weather is poor, it makes it seem like I’m experience more of the ‘real’ Antarctica: the snow, the blizzards and the wind are exactly how I imagined it to be and if I’d arrived and found the snow all melted I don’t think I would feel the same way I do now.  


The view from the outside......






....and from inside

 

The best office view in Rothera has to be in the Tower.  From here we can see everything from the south cove, to the ramp, to the icebergs to the North.  This last week has also been spent getting myself and Tom up to speed with the Standard Operating Procedures for flight following and all other Ops work down here for BAS.  Now that we are up to speed and signed off we can get on with the job we were sent to do.  My role as Comms Officer is to flight follow, boating/diving follow, comms with deep field parties and general radio comms around the base.  The flight following is the bulk of the work we do and involves radio checks, passing weather, checking in with aircraft at certain positions and providing information for take off/landings and circuits at Rothera.  Having completed EFT at Barkston, this is all very familiar and has become the most enjoyable part of the work.  With boating and diving ops we do similar tasks as we do for the aircraft: maintaining radio contact, updating them on weather and logging their positions.  The deep field comms is very different to the following we do and could be seen more as an informal radio show.  The guys in the field can be living in a tent collecting data for up to two months and each night it is our job to collect their data and chat to that party.  This can be anything from talking about what’s going on around base, how their favourite sports team did, to what’s going on globally.  These guys will spend so much time away from base that it is good to chat to a different voice once in a while and get some news that doesn’t concern ice samples!



The Tower at New Bransfield

 That’s all for now, I hope it makes up for my long absence.  I will hopefully be able to write more frequently now that I’m settled in here and the next post will possibly be about what I get up to during the day.  To be honest it probably won’t be that interesting so I’ll just write about penguins.  Everybody loves penguins...

A juvenile Emperor penguin

 Some Photos from around base:



A few quick snaps of the Kamikaze club, which had no link to WWII whatsoever and which, once you made it round the two bouncers and along the dodgey alley, was a hoofin' club.



Don Juan of Pesos

5^th Nov

11:30 local

As I said in my last post: I probably wouldn’t write on Wednesday night.  I had good intentions to but the vast task of packing all my kit the night before somewhat preoccupied me.  I spent most of the night packing, repacking; weighing, reweighing and before I knew it: it was 2 am.  With regards to the weighing of my bags my bathroom scales aren’t the best.  To be honest they’re rubbish.  So instead what do I do? I create a character on Wii Fit called Baggy and measure the weight that way.  It was such a riiiidiculous thing to do but I was getting desperate.  And what really started to get annoying was when the Wii repeatedly told me that for Baggy’s weight and height his BMI equalled death.  It’s a bag! I don’t care what its BMI is or its Wii fit age is, just weigh the bastard thing! “Oh Baggy with a Wii Fit age of 70 and a BMI of 2, you should really go to hospital” – Sod off. 

Everything after that went well and I arrived at Heathrow with PLENTY of time to spare which for me was very unusual.  Before I left I had a nice lunch with the family who came to see me off.  No tears, so I can only assume they cracked open the champers when they got back in the car! 

At the time of writing I’m currently sitting in Santiago Airport, Chile, waiting for my connecting flight to Punta Arenas.  It’s the first time I’ve been to South America and from what I can see out of the windows of the terminals it is stunning.  On the flight in from Madrid we were told to put our seatbelts on as we passed over the Andes, no idea why; and at the risk of being called gay, they were breath taking.  To fly over the Andes at 25,000ft is something that my literary skills cannot do justice.  The snow capped peaks hinted at what was to come later on this journey.

13:35 local

Just had lunch and I’ve realised what people have known for a while: I have special needs.  I paid for everyone else’s meals as I needed to pay by card and instantly forgot that everyone had paid me back for their food.  So I’ve got Pesos.  I’ve got lots of Pesos.  I’m effectively the Don Juan in terms of Pesos.  So what do I do? Take out more Pesos of course.  $20,000 more.  So now I have $60,000.  Great.  Firstly why in God’s name does your currency need to be so big Chile? Take of at least a nought or two.  $600 for a can of coke?  Knock off the last zero and let’s call it 60 cents or something.  Secondly: what the hell do I do with $60,000? Buy 100 cans of coke? For anyone who’s wondering what the current exchange is on Pesos: $1000 is about £1.20.  I know some of you at this point are probably saying: “What’s he so uppity about? It’s only £72.” I’m only in Chile one night which means I’ll have to blow most of it tonight.  Luckily we have found a few places to visit in Punta, including a Japanese WWII style club.  Yeah, I know what you’re thinking.  

6^th Nov

Today was supposed to be the day, but it turns out it isn’t.  I’m writing this from my hotel room but I should be in the Antarctic now.  Unfortunately due to adverse weather conditions we are stuck here until Monday.  So it looks like it’s a good job I am the Don Juan of Pesos after all. 

Yesterday when we were met by the agent sent to meet and greet us at the airport, we were told that we would probably be flying this morning.  That was put back until the afternoon and the afternoon soon became Monday.  To be honest I’m not complaining: the hotel’s nice, there are bars and restaurants and, especially for those staying the 18 months, it’s a chance to relax before getting on to the continent.  I also met up with Tom Gilderthorp who is the other Royal Navy holdover as well as the SNOC.  As it turns out the weather is holding a lot more people up than just myself. Gilders was supposed to have arrived two days ago. 

We didn’t end up in the Japanese bar last night.  It was located at the end of a dark alley with two shifty looking men standing at the end of it.  Instead we ended up in the Union Club in the basement of a mansion built for the widow of a wealthy wool merchant in the 1800’s. It turned out it was the place to be when in Punta on a Friday night and we spent the evening drinking the local beer and listening to Rod Stewart, not exactly the night I had planned! 

Hopefully the next time I write it will be to say that I’m on Antarctic soil and not that I’ve been delayed further. But I’m not holding my breath or counting my Pesos......