Our Christmas festivities have been brought forward to the 24th due to our iminent arrival at Halley and the Brunt ice shelf, so to begin with style for our Christmas Eve the crew joined us in the red room and we proceeded to drink the beer fridge dry! and then some!!!! the supply of beer and cider appeared endless. We joined Matt ( who is going to Signy as Base Commander) in the galley to assist with making a nice pan of Mulled Wine. I took charge of the music and DJ Nej rocked the night away with some classic tunes from the 90's followed by some corkers from the 80's......have some good video clips of the dancing.....most of us had turned in by about 04:00 with the prospect of a 09:15 Sit Rep and Relief briefing!!!! funnily enough there were no hangovers as most were still inebriated ;)
The real wake up was at 10:00, the captain managed to find a suitable slab of ice to wedge the ship into, and the game was on!!!!! Football, extreme Antarctic Style!!! We played for about an hour! What a scream! ended up a bit of a mix of football and rugby due to the fact that the pitch (ice) had a good foot or so of surface snow!! To think that we have played football in one of the most extreme locations on earth, in the Weddell sea, on the sea ice (approx 1 metre
thick) with about 3.5km of water beneath us was absolutely mind blowing!!!
The series of unbelievable events is the only thing that is managing to keep the edge off the fact that this is the first Christmas away from my beautiful wife and children, and belive me that's b****y tough!!! I love and miss you guys more than i can ever tell you!!!!!! xxx
12:00 and we congregated on the Foc'sle (the front part of the ship) for the traditional Christmas carols, Mulled wine and mince pies.. between us we put on a pretty good show!!
14:00 and time to be seated for Christmas dinner. Ray and Rab did an astounding job in catering for us with an impressive 5 course feast that would easliy grace the tables of any top notch restaurant!! Well done boys!!
Needless to say the beer fridge is nearly dry again and its only just 11pm, although the steward was prepared for tonight with a few crates in reserve.... The music is blasting and spirits are high ( should make for some interesting sights tomorrow)
Not far to go now until we should reach open water for the final leg to Halley although we have been informed that they are expecting a blow this weekend.
Merry christmas to all the followers of this blog, your interest and messages of support are fabulous and i'm chuffed that my gorgeous wife has been able to set this up to enable me/us to share our experiences on this trip of a lifetime..
On that note i'd better dry my eyes and try and find my beer!!!!!!
CHEERS!!!!!!!
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