So here we are sitting in Stancombe Cove again. Now, though, there are only two of us aboard the good ship 'Pelagic'. Our clients, and now friends, from Oceanities left us yesterday to join the cruise ship 'Akademik Ioffe' for their ride home.

The people on the 'Ioffe' were very nice to us giving us lunch, a top-up of water for our sweet water tanks, some fruit and superb hot shower; thanks to Liz the Zodiac driver, Chad, Andrew and Boris the ELs (Expedition Leaders) among others. Aboard the 'Ioffe' we also met the rest of this season's Oceanities Antarctic team; Paula and Rebecca.

I think that if Christmas hadn't been just around the corner that a few of the guys would have been very keen to sail back north across the Drake with us, and we would have been glad to have them along too. On the other hand I think the other half of the team were only too glad to get off the yacht and back to more civilised surroundings - it's not for everyone :)

Back aboard 'Pelagic' Magnus and I had a very relaxed evening, even going so far as to make a magnificent meal of cheese and chorizo toasties on the Refleks - Not that toasties wouldn't be good enough to serve to our guests, it's just not very easy to make toasties for eight people on such a small hotplate.

Today, Friday, we have been doing a few chores around the boat. Magnus has been making a set of new sail-ties from the cover braid of a retired rope, I have been converting some of the saloon lights from old fashioned and power hungry incandescent bulbs to super efficient LED lights. It takes a little time to convert each light fitting as I strip out the old bulb holders and solder in the strips of LED tapes. Down here in Antarctica, with 24-hour daylight we don't waste too much battery power on lights but later in the season when we are sailing in the Beagle Channel the interior lights are used a lot and they consume a lot of power - not any more. Using less battery power means less fuel consumed to charge batteries and therefore helps us to reduce our carbon footprint even more.

We are now studying the weather trends trying to pick the best time to leave; it's definitely not today with a forty knot blow forecast overnight. It looks like we stay an extra day in the hope of picking up a favourable wind. We don't have clients on board so have the freedom to pick our time without having to worry about people missing flights etc..