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.