A couple of much quieter days in our anchorage at Deception Island, and thankfully a couple of good sleeps! We've also discovered, thanks to a new chart, the what we have always known as Telefon Bay is marked on the chart as Stancombe Cove with the larger bay off Port Foster know as Telefon Bay - Makes sense really.

Yesterday we prepared the bunks for the rest of our scientists who will arrive later today, and then went for a hike to reconnoitre the route to one of the Chinstrap penguin colonies on Macaroni Point.

We took the boat around to Telefon Bay pulled it well up the beach and stashed our shore barrel. I should explain what the shore barrel is - Whenever we put people ashore here we leave a 'shore barrel' which contains a survival kit should the shore party and the boat not be able to get back to each other for any reason. It contain a tent, thermal blankets, first-aid, stove, pots, food, radio, flares etc.. We then hiked up Telefon Ridge corssing some very wet ground with small melt pools hidden by slushy snow, ascended a rocky ridge (rock being a generous term to apply to the cinder that makes up Deception Island) then kicked steps up a moderate snow slope to arrive at the top of the ridge for a view to of the Bransfield Straight to the north, when the cloud lifted momentarily we had a view anyway.

The exposed ground is generally a loose cinder marked with numerous frost shattered black lava bombs and fewer (maybe 5%) brick coloured ones.

Once on the ridge we had an easy walk along its spine to the west arriving at a point where we thought we could see an easy route down the colony. At this point the visibility started to fail and as the wind would also be in our face for the return journey we decided to head back. The return journey was uneventful except that we made a small detour to look a group of about 18 Weddell and Crabeater seals hauled out on the ice in Extrmadura Cove.

We had a wet upwind ride in the boat back to Pelagic where Magnus and Thomas boarded to light the Refleks and make coffee while I went off in the boat to check the shore anchors. It was whilst inspecting one of the shore anchors that I managed to get myself a wet foot in a melt pool, I'd been doing well until that point.

I think Thomas is getting into this sailing/exploring lark as he has been browsing the for-sale section in an old issue of Yachting World that is laying around on Pelagic and asking lots of questions; I wonder if he realises just how much it would hurt his wallet :)

Last night and this morning have been very busy for Port Foster with several cruise ships visiting; Polar Pioneer, Cornithian II, and Fram all having visited. There is also a Spanish supply vessel around somewhere and we are awaiting the imminent arrival of Akedemik Ioffe with our scientists aboard.

I dipped into my new copy of H.W. Tilman's 'The eight sailing and mountaineering books' - Mischief Goes South to see what he had to say on Deception Island. Deception Island was a busier place in those days with more bases; British, Chilean and Argentine, the British base being the port of entry for the South Shetland Islands with a magistrate etc.. This was in 1966/67. There are still Spanish and Argentine bases here. One year after Tillman's visit there was volcanic eruption which caused the evacuation and closure of the Chilean and British bases - much to Tillman's delight it seems!

I'll close this entry with a quote that I found in Tillman attributed to Byron (presumably John Byron the explorer but I'm not sure) "Damn Deception, it is always disgusting".