Falkland Islands Deployment

I can't say I didn't absolutely love South Georgia- but I really had hoped that I would see everything that I hadn't seen in the Falklands- and one bird I really wanted to see was a wandering albatross. The stuffed one in Grytviken didn't really make up for it. So when I popped up to the flight deck after dinner a few nights ago, I was very excited to see this unmistakable silhouette, gliding along behind the ship. Infact there were 6 fully-adult and completely massive Wandering Albatross swooping all around the wake of the ship!

So if you didn't already know what's special about this bird- here's the basics: It's the largest wingspan of any bird in the world (up to 3.5 metres across!), it spends most of it's life in the air, and can circle the planet (the southern ocean) entirely without landing! They like following boats apparently- and that seemed the case as they were still out there gliding around after 3 days! They're amazing birds, never landing, and never flapping their wings. They just sit on the ocean breeze and can travel a lot faster than our ship!!



So it's been about 5 days since an amotional goodbye to a rather cold Port Stanley. Since then we've been heading north with RFA Gold Rover- and would you believe it I'm back in tropical rig, and sweating in intense heat! The diesels in particular have been threatening to pack their bags as the engine room temperatures went over 30 degC. But that hasn't stopped the inevitable end-of-deployment Captain's rounds- the whole ship in the last few days has been all hands on deck painting, cleaning, scrubbing and painting everything till it's... er... ship-shape and shiny...

Eurgh. That paragraph deserves to be ended there.

Back to nature. I saw 4 Minke Whale yesterday. I know that because of their blow shape and they never fluke their tales, their fin is small, and they commonly hang out in groups in the sub-tropics (aaaaahh yeah get me...!):

And that's another photo of a wandering albatross there, and 2 cape pigeons (they're actually types of petrel, not pigeons).

So I can't really believe it's less than 4 weeks till I'm home? That's really crept up on me! Everyone HAS been counting down though... the advanced leave party has already been flown home, with instructions on what will happen on December 21st... all we need to do is get this old grey warrior home, tired as she may be. She's really starting to feel her age these days... 1200 miles down, a mere 6000 left to go...

Eurgh. I'm going to end this post abruptly here.

The captain, a man of his word, had promised me a bit of face time on the royal navy website- and he's already delivered! Here's an article about the service, just follow the link.

http://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/operations-and-support/surface-fleet/type-42-destroyers/hms-gloucester/news/antarctic-remembrance

It's Saturday, my lips are wrecked, I'm a little snotty, tired, and I'm struggling to keep the boiler going. Brilliant news when the temperature outside is below zero. But what an amazing week... topped off with a millionaire's experience of St. Andrew's Bay. Yeah, I mean, you'd have to be a millionaire if you wanted to just fly a helicopter up in the sky purely to take photos of South Georgia, right?
Actually the pilot was even taking requests, so I asked him to fly really high so I could get a really good shot of the ship in the bay- I think you'll agree it's come out quite well!

After Gold Harbour and Grytviken, I thought I'd give myself a rest from the 'rigmaroll' of going ashore (In order to go ashore, you have to wear all-in-one survival suits, get sprayed with icy water as the RIB blasts across the waves... nah, I'd done enough). The Lynx flight was enough for me for the day!

We've now just set sail from South Georgia, heading... back to ECMP. But only for 2 days, and then we start a rather long voyage...

Meanwhile, I have plenty of DVDs for company, a bit of revision (yep, I'm studying again), a camcorder to repair (or maybe just a new one to buy), and a few other bits and pieces to keep me occupied. If you want to send me or anyone here mail, it'd best be done quite soon, as I fear this weekend maybe the last chance we have to recieve any.

After a couple of days, we left our anchorage in Grytviken, minding all the icebergs about, and headed round to Gold Harbour. It only took a few hours to get there, and I was lucky enough to get off the ship within an hour of anchoring. Unfortunately the snow was really heavy, and it was very misty too- and considering it just looked like a beach from the ship, it didn't seem like much, until we got there on the MIB, and then suddenly realised the sheer volume of life.

There were so many seals, that we were in danger of causing trouble because there was no space to pull the boat in- and with these huge elephants in the water, it was pretty daunting! There's not many words to describe Gold Harbour except spectacular. The mountains that surround the bay, I worked out, are topped with 60 metres of untouched snow- an avalanche waiting to happen! I took 170 photographs in poor weather on that evening, but the forecast for the next day was much better, so I gave my camera to Olly who went ashore and took a whole load more in the morning. So these are the best shots from both of the trips- mostly Olly's because he had better weather.

And if you wondered if there is a restriction on getting too close to the animals, well yes there is, but there's nothing stopping them walking right up to us! I witnessed all sorts of things happening; a lot of mating, 2 male elephants fighting over the females, the biggest colony of king penguins you're ever likely to see (there's supposed to be about 10,000 here), Weddell seals, fur seals, gentoo penguins, and what I thought was originally a wandering albatross turned out to be a northern Giant Petrel (the southern one I saw a lot in the Falklands). And about 1000 baby king penguins being protected by the adults. It was all going on! (I'm slightly annoyed that I still haven't seen a wandering albatross...)

The photos with me in them weren't my camera, if you were disappointed with the quality...


So the 2 photos below are a Northern Giant Petrel and a bunch of king penguins. Below that is a mixture of seals and penguins... then further on there's a very beautiful fur seal, a weddell seal that got very friendly with a visitor on our ship, a dead baby penguin (maybe suicidal), the money shot (Gloucester in the background), and a few close encounters with a friendly king!



















This was an experience I'll never ever forget. Next stop- St. Andrews Bay!

I've spent the majority of the deployment building up my imagination of what South Georgia would be like- I've seen a couple of books and it looked amazing. But then as we were approaching, I remembered that I'm not actually a professional David Attenborough, just a small-time pretender, and actually have no idea how to find out where typical wildlife hotspots are. Still, as we reached our anchorage, the scenery was nothing short of spectacular. South Georgia is in the Southern Ocean, so while Cape Horn at the tip of South America is still the furthest south we've been, this little island picks up all the antarctic winds and hence there is constantly changing weather conditions, aswell as a broken o-zone layer which presents you with sunburn if the sun should pop out. The weather in these photos is great, but the next morning was a different story. I was on the first boat ashore with the padre, because I had volunteered to play the organ for a remembrance service on the second day, and so on this first day I went ashore to "recce" the organ and see if it was playable! In the first photo on the right you can see King Edward point, and on the left set further back is the old whaling station in Grytviken. The whole settlement is looked after by about 20 people who either work for BAS (British Atlantic Survey) or volunteers working at the museum and post office (I think). It was also the first time I got to really test my new super expensive orange thermal insulating, super wellies. Everyone was taking the mick, but I was determined I would have the last laugh!

Right. Scrap that whole first bit. This is what Grytviken is REALLY like:

The small town is run by penguins. They run the show. They also guard it, and you have to stay out of their way. It's also a battleground for elephant seals. They can grow to 6 metres, and weigh over 3 tonnes (some of them)- so the whole place is pretty run down with violence... the whaling station has been torn down by elephant seals that took it too far (some people try to tell me the place was abandoned in the early eighties, but lets not get in the way of a good dit...)- the vast amount of King penguins have been drafted in to keep order, and Weddell seals are there just to raise morale. It's supposed to be mating season- but when one Montague elephant seal has decided to bag himself 30 of the finest females in the cove, you can imagine the furore amongst the Capulet elephants around the other side of the er... post office. There's ripped noses, bloodied blubber and scars deeper than Arnie's very best. Honestly, being a human, this is not the place to go for a drink. Possible hence the lack of pubs. But there is some respite. Weddell seals don't always have an audience, so they just shipwreck themselves anywhere they see fit. Usually by the side of the road, the road which the penguins are patrolling up and down hour by hour. Infact this is them here, stopping to make sure I'm not causing too much hassle. This stretch of road seperates King Edward point from the whaling station, and there are 2 groups of 15 penguins who patrol it every hour. They didn't check my ID this time round.
Here's me again doing a bit of detective work. Seems the penguins march in step too. This is a typical male elephant seal, covered in battle scars, bleeding all over the snow. It seems if they're not fighting, they're sleeping! I found this other one wedged in the grassy lumps behind the post office. And weddell Seals lying about the place looking for love!

Going just a little beyond Grytviken, I managed to get all these photos. With everyone else of course. The big face below is a female Elephant seal. They don't look so bad- their husbands are the ugliest things I've seen for a while! And a Weddell seal having fun...

We also decided to go for a trek up into the mountains. We had planned an epic world-record mission of 100km during the afternoon, but this is how great the view was after about 750 metres. And that's puns sinking in the snow:

It was at this point that my camcorder decided to breathe it's last, which is a real shame because I had some really exciting footage of seals mating and penguins doing their stuff. But my camera, which was also being put through the mill, seemed to just about hold out. The snow eased off and I managed to get many more photos. These are just a few of them. There was some other amazing things going on too- later in the day the temperature dropped, and the whole cove froze over, as you can see in the photos. The patches of ice were enough to stop our RIB running errands, so it was left to the local patrol boats with reinforced hulls to get through the ice and take us back to the ship! In the other photos you can see some pretty content looking Weddell seals, one of the king penguin shore patrols, me with a pretty lazy big male elephant seal, and an iceberg! Oh and a view of the Whaling station across the other side of the cove from King Edward point. Just behind it you can see the bell tower of the church, where I became the world's most southern Organist.... (and apparently I'm the first one to have played that organ)...