Too much to blog about! At the moment.

Well, I'm experiencing overload at the moment. Hopefully tomorrow I can catch up. Today, at about 10:30am, when we were about to leave the Simpson and have second breakfast, the radio crackled on, and our base commander said:

"All stations, all stations...please be advised that the Shackleton has an ETA of 16:00 local time. May God have mercy on us all."

Well, okay, she didn't say that last sentence. And chaos didn't reign as soon as she said that. But things did pick up considerably. The night shift went to bed. I packed all my stuff up. I cleaned up my office. And, here I sit, blogging in a portside berth on the Shackleton, bobbing off the coast of Antarctica. Away from Halley. Strange!


And, as of two hours ago, the Halley relief has officially begun. As I sit here, the biggest items are being unloaded off the Shackleton onto the sea ice - which looks solid and not too far from the shelf, I'm happy to say. In about 9 hours, I will be starting my first 12-hour shift on a Snow Cat, hauling stuff up to the shelf.

Tomorrow night, I'll bring more pictures of the Shackleton, and the last minute penguin trip I squeezed in on Tuesday.

As for today, I note that tomorrow (GMT) is the winter solstice - or summer solstice, in my case. The shortest (longest) day of the year. Although the concept doesn't really apply when the sun hasn't set for a few months!