We eventually got back into our bolt hole in Stancombe Cove at midday yesterday. It was snowing quite heavily despite Peter, one of our film crew, insisting that "it was clearing"! The forecast was for strong winds overnight and during the course of today and that is what we have been having. The cove is well sheltered but prone to Willawaws (woolies) that can come screaming across the anchorage at over 50 knots. We haven't seen any that strong today, but they have been up over 40 knots.

Dinner was roast beef last night. We have some great cuts of vacuum packed beef aboard, from the Falkland Islands Meat company in Stanley, but usually end up using it in a stew or some similar one-pot recipe as on this kind of trip we really have no idea what time dinner will be and we can leave a one pot meal simmering on the Refleks and then just cook the accompanying vegetables, rice, pasta, or whatever when everybody is ready to eat. As we could actually plan the meal today I decided to go for a roast.

We had a visitor during the afternoon when Kim Crosbie of IAATO who was in the area on the cruise ship 'Fram' popped over to say hello. Kim once sailed from Ushuaia to Cape Town on 'Pelagic' so knows the yacht well and is a long time friend and colleague of Ron and few other guys on the Oceanities team.

We had just finished dinner, and a movie, last night when a strong gust broke our starboard forward shore anchor. We had all hands on deck to help rig a new one. The tide was high so we were unable to reach the rocks we had used for the original anchor so carried our spare Danforth anchor ashore in the zodiac (Actually a Bombard C3 and not a Zodiac boat at all), buriedit and piled about 150 kg of large stones on top of it. All were back on board and heading for their beds just after midnight.

Magnus and I had a sleepless night with one of us popping up to check after almost every heavy gust hit us. Sometimes a gust would hit us from astern then swirl right around the crater and finish with a flourish on the bow. We had to tighten a line at about 7am but all of the anchors seem to be holding.

In a couple of hours at low tide we'll go and replace the line that broke last night with a wire strop; hopefully the wind will have relented a little by then too.

Tomorrow, the 14th, looks like a fair work day so hopefully we can get the team back to Baily Head to plant their last piece of recording equipment over there.

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