,

I'm finally off. I left the not so delightful port of Immingham at one o'clock in the morning on Saturday aboard RRS Ernest Shackelton, southward bound.

I've now been sailing five days, and we've just passed the southern tip of Portugal. Tomorrow afternoon, we should catch a glimpse of the Islands of Madeira, off the coast of north Africa, followed by the Canary Islands on Sunday.

It may be winter whilst we're stilll in the Northern Hemisphere, but it's already hotting up onboard. One of the bonuses of being one of the 'Metbabes', as fellow meteorologists Rob, Dave and I are now collectively known, is that we get to see the temperatures rise for every degree of latitute we move south. Today it's 22 degrees outside and it's only going to get hotter. Luckily, my main job aboard, apart from six hourly meteorological observations, is painting and scrubbing the decks, so I get to enjoy the sunshine.