Pelagic has been a very busy little ship since our last blog entry hence the lack of writing. We, or rather the Oceanites scientist massive have now counted every chinstrap penguin colony on the island mostly up close and personal and some others from the foredeck of Pelagic as she hovered just offshore. There is a final number but I will let Ron Naveen, king of the Oceanites announce this to the world. It is after all their intellectual property and not mine to blurt out willy nilly. Suffice to say I wouldn't have thought it possible. It's not so much the number but the fact that four guys can count that high and maintain a high accuracy level. Talking to the guys about accuracy or rather about error levels in an interesting world to enter. There are many forms of both it seems but as far as I can understand these guys aim to be within 5% and certainly within 10%. Remarkable when at times they were counting in 60 kt gusts. Fair play to Ron and his team. This is probably the first time all the chinstraps on the island have been counted and certainly the first time it's ever been done in one season. In our searches we found at least one rookery that has never been noted before.

In the process of all this we of the Pelagic have had some small adventures of our own. Our stern gland packing, a sort of greasy rope that fits between the propeller shaft and the tube through which it exits the boat providing a seal against the ingress of sea water (very important!) gave up the ghost and the sea tried to come in. We had been trying a new (to this boat anyway) type of packing rope with PTFE (like Teflon on your frying pan) grease. This stuff is not supposed to degrade if it gets hot so quickly which may very well be the case however it does fall apart altogether and bits of it wash in with the sea. Useless does not describe this 'new' stuff. We've been constantly adjusting the stern gland fitting since we left Uruguay 2000 miles ago and finally had to do something the other day. Adding just two bands of the old style greasy packing rope sorted the problem immediately and now the thing runs both cool and almost dry, the holy grail of stern gland performance and a great relief to both Chris and I.

Re-entering the Bellows from one of our many sorties into the outside world the one day we found the way almost entirely blocked with ice. A cruise ship had just gone through ahead of us but they were mighty and powerful and we are but small and puny by comparison and the lead they created through the ice closed up fast behind them. Not so fast though that we had not entered the outer end only to have the floes ahead close ranks and bar our way like a wall of nightclub bouncers. To make matters worse another cruise ship was preparing to come out through the Bellows, who'd have thought you could actually have a traffic jam in Antarctica? These guys passing would push the ice aside and compress it all around us leaving us further trapped if not crushed in the process. I called the captain on the radio and a very Russian accent agreed to stand by and wait for us to get through before starting himself. The film guys thought this was excellent action which I suppose visually it probably was and set to work recording every moment as with me up up the mast and then on the foredeck with an ice pole (long stick to move ice out of the way of the boat and then the boat out of the way of the ice when the floes weigh more than the boat) and Chris at the wheel we tried to force our way through. It took us forty minutes to cover a couple of hundred meters all with 1 bemused gentoo penguin and 100 onlookers from the cruise ship presumably roused from their happy hour by an announcement on the ship's tannoy. I suspect we made a decent photo opportunity though that was scarcely our aim.

In other news I have had a haircut! My bouffant afro David Hasselhoff look finally became too much for me and had to go and Thomas offered slightly too gleefully to trim me up so while I cowered in the cockpit with a bin liner over my head like a festival raincoat he set to with Chris's clippers. From the start it did not go well. I have rather tough hair it seems and the clippers were not that interested but once you start these things it's really rather hard to stop. For what seemed like hours Thomas manfully ground away at my barnet and in something of a war of attrition slowly wore the hair away. Thomas is a hero for continuing where most would have given up with a suppressed giggle and a shrug of the shoulders and for most of that time I looked like I was the victim of some nuclear accident or unfortunate hair sprouting disease with a combination of shaven hollows and spriggy tufts. Director Peter thought the whole was very amusing and filmed the whole lot for posterity or possibly to make me look a complete goat should the footage ever make the final cut.

Peter and cameraman Erik (with a K) have been picking on me somewhat in recent days filming as I go about the chores of the day. I got the chance to star in my own cookery show which started with the final dismemberment of Dolly the sheep. I'd been hunting in the Joy of Cooking for something new to do with lamb and found myself reading about ribs. Never tried lamb ribs before but the book said thay were good so I set to work with a big knife and the carpenters saw to deconstruct poor dead Dolly. Ribs being in the middle and some bits already gone by the time I'd got the ribs out we were left with one front leg, one back leg (not from the same side) and the spine which all looked a bit unfortunate so they came into three as well. All with the cameras rolling. I think it would be fair to say as a butcher I make a decent sailor. Continuing my naked chef (or is it Fernly Wormly?) act in the kitchen saw (no pun intended) the ribs into and out of the oven and onto the table with some mash and veg and into some very hungry mouths. Pukka!

Yesterday with all the Deception chinstraps accounted for we made the break for Livingstone island to (guess what?) count some penguins there. The plan was to stay in a little cove called Johnson's Dock on the south side of Livingstone so we dismantled all our shore anchors and bought them aboard. We rounded the western side of Deception and went to photograph a rather stunning iceberg, the sun came out, the wind was light and in a suitable direction for sailing so up went full sail and off we shot at 8-9knots in high spirits. It was not to be though, by the time we'd sailed the 20 or so miles to the penguin site the wind was well up and had swung to the south making a zodiac landing impossible. Scientist Steve spotted another whole new colony and in worsening conditions we went as close as we dared with Pelagic arriving at something between a guestimate and an estimate of penguin numbers before turning for home. Bad weather is forcast over the next few days and we'd rather be cosy in our hole in Stancomb Bay, Deception with 4 or five ropes ashore than swinging about an anchorage unknown to either of us. Only trouble with that plan is the springs double hightides we have at the moment together with very low atmospheric pressure meaning that three of the four rocks we put our wire strops around were well under water by the time we arrived and have stayed that way all night. we anchored out in Telephon Bay and Chris and I have been keeping anchor watch all night moving the boat once in the early hours as the wind swung. As I sit here in the dodger wrapped in my sleeping bag with a steaming cup of tea it's snowing pretty hard outside, wind 20 knots from the NE temp about zero and we're about to move the boat again. Lovely!