AntarcticDoctor

I’ve been wrestling for some time to get an uber-cool photo gallery to work on the blog, but have run into many snags. Not willing to give up, I now bring my own gallery online. Click the link to the right to go through to the gallery page. There’s lots there, including:

• Plenty of as-yet-unseen images of the voyage down, including characters aboard the ship, Bouvet Island and the pack ice (pictures of penguins and seals to follow soon, by popular demand)
• For the medics, some pictures of the hospital and theatre aboard the SA Agulhas
• More mugshots of the team
• More images from the base and surrounds

I’ll be adding content over the next few days, so pop in whenever you have a chance.

For those who may be interested, it is possible to track the our research and supply ship SA Agulhas online while she is at sea.  The position is automatically reported to the sailwx.info site, which provides up-to-date information on the ship’s position and local weather.  Click the link on the right to go to the page, where you can scroll and zoom the map to see where the Agulhas has been recently as well.  Check out the example, below.  You’ll note that the latest data is from 18 February, when she arrived back in Cape Town, but during late March and April we’ll be able to track the relief expedition to Marion Island.

I’m still aboard the Agulhas, holding station off the ice shelf.  We’ve finished the ramp and unloaded all the heavy cargo.  Poor weather prevented us from flying yesterday, so the lighter cargo operations had to wait.  The benefit of the poor weather was that we had very heavy snowfall onboard, with some drifts up to 30cm deep.  We had a good snowball fight on the newly cleared foredeck, followed by a roaring party last night – about half the expedition teams have been transferred to SANAE IV already, but they’ve been replaced with German construction workers left without a home because their construction ship is still stuck in heavy ice.  They were flown in to construct the new Neumayer station, but the temporary accomodation cannot be offloaded due to the thick bay ice, so they were being hosted at SANAE.  In any case, we had a festive night, celebrating SA’s New Year at 2200 ship’s time, then Germany’s at 2300, then our own at 0000.  Whee.  Needless to say, the tables were empty at breakfast 😉

Today “dawned” beautiful, with a clear sky, flat sea and almost no wind.  One can work outside in short sleeves if active.  The light cargo (smaller containers and fuel drums for the choppers) was flown off to the depot on the ice shelf.  I spent the morning in the clinic doing stock taking and my medical report, and then the afternoon doing washing and logistic planning.  Half my team is already at SANAE; the rest, including myself, are scheduled for the last flight tomorrow.  We have to hope the weather holds, of course.