Preparing to go

This time next month I'll be on my way to South Georgia!  The last few months have flown by in a blur and I now can't wait to get going.  I'll be flying on 4th November on the Falkland Islands airbridge - a 22hr flight via Ascension Island (EDIT: looks like I'll be flying the long way now via Chile....with BAS the itinerary is never firm until you are on a plane and in the air!).  In Stanley I'll join the BAS ship RRS JCR (James Clark Ross) as she sails south to Signy Island and then on to KEP, South Georgia.

The focus has now shifted from medical training (and completing MSc module assignments!) to BAS-related preparation...


My packing actually started back in July.  Winterers are issued with a P-box which can be filled with heavy items and sent south with the research ships as cargo.  In order for the logistics team to sort and load the cargo, our boxes needed to be in Cambridge by the beginning of August - deciding what to pack by this deadline was surprisingly challenging!  

The stations are well provisioned for all our basic needs, but a few home comforts and luxuries are nice to take down. A years worth of contact lenses, personal toiletries and my favourite tea took up a chunk of the box but I struggled a little to think of what else to pack.  In the end I sent down my awesome muckboots, ski boots, sketching materials, a few medical books and a ukulele! I also sent some nordic skis with three-pin bindings, which I'm rather ambitiously hoping to learn some telemark turns on.

The heels are not that crazy - it is traditional to dress formally at Midwinter

BAS issued me with clothing suitable for South Georgia, and I supplemented this with some of my own gear.  I packed my box in my flat in Plymouth, then had to unpack it all in order to take it down three flights of stairs and repack in the BASMU van, only to unpack and re-pack AGAIN in Cambridge as my box needed to be lined!  Just the trickiest pack of all to come now, though I at least have a generous 54kg flight allowance (EDIT: now a more tricky 23kg with the flight change).

Repacked - again (minus contraband)!

The countdown to departure really began in September with the BAS pre-deployment training in Cambridge.  This was the first chance for everyone going South to get to meet and socialise together. Roger (KEP station leader), Lewis (fisheries scientist), Jamie (higher predator scientist), Russ (boating officer) and I made up the KEP contingent, with Matthew (returning boating officer) joining us in Derbyshire the following week.  I won't meet Ernie (generator mechanic, already at KEP) and Robbie (electrician, currently at Bird Island) until I'm on station.

We had sessions on a variety of topics, including the finer details of waste management which is one of the docs responsibilities on station!  We were also introduced to a few of the many BAS science projects - holding an Antarctic ice core and listening to the bubbles popping as it melted was pretty cool. It is from analysis of these bubbles trapped in the ancient ice that the scientists are able to model changes in atmospheric gas concentrations.  You can read more about the ice cores and climate science here.

Admiring our oil spill boom set up

After a more practical morning of oil spill response and fire warden training, BASMU descended on Girton to start the first aid course.  It was a hectic few days of teaching and we were all impressed by the skills demonstrated by the participants.

At the end of the week we said goodbye to JCR-doc Tim as he left to join his ship.  We never quite got round to having a group photo of us docs together, but here are two pics of my partners in crime: Tim and Rothera-doc Tom about to climb the Dewerstone, and Tom and Halley-doc Greig enjoying some photography on Dartmoor.

JCR doc Tim and Rothera doc Tom

Rothera doc Tom and Halley doc Greig

After Girton us winterers travelled up to Derbyshire for some field skills training.  We split into our station groups, and I got to know all the island guys a bit better (I'll be providing telemedicine support to the 4 overwintering on Bird Island) as well as having some more island-specific training.  It was interesting to see how the different groups bonded, and watch the characters of each station start to come out: I've always thought you had to be a bit mad to go to Halley....  

Halley on cook

Back in Plymouth Tom, Greig and I ran an Advanced First Aid course.  It was a fun few days which I hope those who attended found useful.  We have an invested interest in these guys knowing their stuff, as they'll be the ones looking after us if we get sick!  

A thoroughly plastered Bird Island Penguin Zoologist Tim plastering KEP Fisheries Scientist Lewis 

A final photo from the hyperbaric medicine course us docs attended in August.  It was a fascinating course, especially having never personally dived - BAS diving only takes place at Rothera, but all us docs need to be trained up so we can deploy to any station if needed.  The other reason I've put this photo here is that the BASMU office in Plymouth is based in the Diving Diseases Research Centre (DDRC).  The DDRC team are a great bunch and have really welcomed and looked after us docs over the past 6 months.  Thanks!

One of the dive chambers at DDRC we used during our hyperbaric medicine training