Summer is coming to an end...

March is flying by! Next week Rothera turns to a wintering base as all of the summers are leaving on the Shackleton which is due in on Wednesday, there are then three days of relief where we unload some freshies and various other goodies to keep us winters happy and then load on all of the now ex-winters P-box's and gash. The past few weeks I have been busy finishing all of the summer sampling, collecting my own microplastic sediment samples, finishing off the hand over with Sam, lots of snowboarding , climbing and walking. So lots of random bits in this summer of fun blog..

 

 

 There have been so many fledging penguins around the Point, the elephant seals seem to have left us until next summer; I'm quite happy about that because they are rather smelly.

 

 

 We had a visiting yacht, I was so excited; we were not allowed to go sailing though much to my dismay, I did stand on it though so technically I've been sailing in the Antarctic,... right...! The yacht was here with a few free divers on it who were testing out Antarctic free diving; seems a tad crazy especially with voldemort around!

 

 

Spot us walking/climbing up Reptile ridge.

 
This was an awesome climb/walk that I have been saving for a sunny day. With Ali Rose and Joe Cox we ropped up and walked the ridge that over looks our base, named reptile ridge. It has walking, climbing and even a great abseil! So much fun.


This is a spider fluorescing; Ben, Kate and I are going to have fun over winter working out what Antarctic species fluoresce which should be fun!

 

Joe Cox came out sampling with us this week and took on the 500 m winching challenge, he completed it in 14 minutes which is pretty quick!

One of my monthly jobs is to collect worms; before I put them in formalsaline I remove them from their casts; it's quite a satisfying but smelly job!

 

Kate and I were on the amphipod collections for the transport aquarium we went down with a hoover and collected lots; on our way to stop we were on a mission to find a cargo net that had fallen off the wharf, we collected it and passed it to topside; as we did this millions of amphipods fell out of the net, so instead of hovering them up we could have just used this net!!! So we dumped it into the aquarium and Sam spent an afternoon catching all of them.

To end an awesome streak of not doing anything completely stupid...... I dropped my radio off the wharf when climbing down the ladder - what a donut. It is now drying out.... hopefully it will still work.

Adam and I completed the last SAR (search and rescue) of the season by waving off the last dash flight out of Rothera - It was a bit emotional. Firstly, because we are really starting to see the end of summer now but also because that's the last plane I am going to see for 8 months ;(

 The sea was so rough the day the Dash took off, Adam and I got soaked.

 

Spot my name in the photo above......

 

 

Kate collecting Emily's radio..!

 

Cleaning duties.

At Rothera there is a type of cleaning rota where by everyone on base takes it in turn to have a day where they help out in the kitchen and clean certain areas around the base. It's a great day to get involved with the kitchen and do some of your own cooking, give your own back to the base and it's nice to have a day off from your usual job to do something different.

So we actually call it the gash rota, and it rotates around like below.

We then do various cleaning jobs, but then we work in this awesome kitchen for the day.

When you are in the kitchen doing the dishes there is a pretty good view.

Haha, no there actually is a good view. You can watch ice bergs float past or pieces of pack ice drift by with seals sleeping peacefully or even watch a penguin waddle on by and if you're lucky you can watch the planes land!



You are given the option to make what ever you want if you're keen so I mixed some herbs together to make Herbs De Provence as this is what I always cook with when I'm at home!

It's awesome working in an industrial kitchen...even the pots are bigger than you!

Anna and I took the afternoon to make coconut macaroons which were lush.

Even when not on gash duty you can offer to help out the chefs. As it was St David's Day this week I just had to make welsh cakes....however there are 76 people on base which meant I had to make over 100 welsh cakes....I can't actually believe I managed it without burning any, making that much of a mess or poisoning anyone! They turned out to be rather moorish.