NEARLY THERE...

A week since our last port of call, and it's been an eventful week on board. Friday last week was a cheese and wine night, which carried on well into the early hours, followed by a horse racing night on Saturday. My first time at the races and I more than doubled my money! You can see and hear more about all the events on board on the Shackleton diary pages if you follow the link to the British Antarctic Survey website (click on living and working, then diaries).

For the past few days life has been made somewhat challenging by the hurricane force winds and the 8 metre waves they brought along, as we hit by far the stormiest weather of the trip so far. The seas looked really impressive, especially when you could see the waves churning and breaking over an iceberg that was being tossed this way and that. Other meteorological firsts for this week included the first time I officially recorded snow, my first sea ice, and also the first probes fired off the back of the ship to measure the temperatures down to about kilometre below the surface.
I still don't know when I'll get to Halley, it depends on how much ice gets in our way! Earliest ETA is Friday 22nd, but in the ship's sweep stake the chief engineer put his money on January 15th, so who knows...