Post the Second

The time approacheth apace!  As I write this, on the evening of Sunday 18th November, I am but one scant sleep away from sailing.  I received just now an SMS confirmation of the sailing - 10am tomorrow.  Huzzah!



And yet, it still seems hardly real.  I have been waiting since July for this trip - the idea that it is less than a day away seems to have no substance.  It is but a dream within a dream.


Today, however, things did get just a bit more real.    This morning we had our luggage weigh-in at Macquarie No.4 Wharf, followed by the pre-departure briefing aboard that chariot of the southern seas, the Aurora Australis.

The weigh-in was a fairly mundane affair.  Each expeditioner is permitted only 30kg of cabin baggage which means that, before anyone can board, the entirety of the baggage they intend to take must be weighed.  So we duly lined up in front of an antiquated set of scales (which had probably been initially manufactured in order to weigh convicts or something), fully laden with all of our gear.  Each item was then weighed, and if someone had transgressed the magic limit they had to take stuff out to be packed separately.  And have a birthday surgically removed, I expect.

The Scales

The Line

After each person had completed the Holy Ritual of the Weighing they were then herded into an enclosure (from which the above picture was taken).  No doubt this was to stop us wandering off and doing something naughty, such as eating the neighbour's roses or trampling the peonies.

After the hour or so it took to process us all we were then herded aboard the Aurora Australis to undergo the pre-departure briefing.  The briefing involved the Voyage Leader, an Antarctic Division doctor and the Aurora's skipper taking turns in telling us what's what. 

Some of the briefing was about simple housekeeping matters - what time mealtimes are, how to report defects, please be nice to everyone else please etc., where and when you can smoke (which didn't interest me since I took up not-smoking in early 2010) and sundry other bits about shipboard life.

However by far and away the most significant part of the briefing was about how to not be dead on board.  Evidently there is a plethora of methods for becoming dead (or mostly dead) while at sea, and the voyage management were frightfully keen for everyone to avoid death.  They were also keen for everyone to avoid seasickness, but the presentations on that did not quite have the same gripping fascination as the death stuff.

I have decided that I too am keen to avoid developing a case of death whilst aboard, so paid attention.  And therefore I have no photos of any of that.  Sorry about that.  (Photos or life?  I choose life).

Then it was time to practise not being dead.

So, we firstly went to our allocated cabins.  More on those in a later blog post (provided I successfully avoid that death stuff).

I got much of my stuff unpacked in my cabin before the muster bells rang.  Time to practise!  We each grabbed our buoyancy vests and headed to the muster station on the helideck, where a member of the ship's crew ran us through the procedures of mustering and abandoning ship and other stuff like that.

Practising alive-ness

Subsequently we got to try on an immersion suit each.  Immersion suits are full body neoprene things that will apparently keep you alive and floating in near freezing water for nearly a full day.    I am in favour of immersion suits, it must be said.  Damned hard to get on though.  So I am not in favour of immersion suits unless I expect to be immersed in near freezing water.  Which I do not.

Then we all got to sit in a lifeboat for a while.  Wheee, what fun!

And, if that wasn't enough fun, then we got to stand around on the helideck for half an hour waiting for another group to finish their stuff so we could all be finished together.  While waiting I got this photo of my Colleague de la Cuisine, Super-slushy Hannah.  Hannah is very excited about going on the voyage, almost to the point of doing herself a mischief.

Hannah Taylor

And that was it.  Briefing over, and it was time to go home and do some non-Antarctic things for a while, which I have duly done.

Going somewhere else for a while

So, tomorrow it begins.  We meet at the gate to the Self's Point fuel depot tomorrow morning at 7:50, where we will board the Aurora once more.  Then, at 10, off we go!

While at sea I will have no access to the internet, so it means that I will not be able to update the blog until I get some free time at Davis.  I expect that will be sometime soon after the 4th of December; I hope so, anyway.

Please feel free to leave a comment/greeting/suggestion about the blog/question/whatever below.  I would love to hear from you!