More snow - 22 August to 28 August

Firstly, happy birthday to my Grandfather, who turned 80, and to Roy and Frances too. Hope you had wonderful days.

As promised, here is the video I shot of the storm two weeks ago now. The swell was in the region of 10-15m. Every time a big wave broke, we could feel the vibrations 100m away in the base. Quite scary actually.

Blizzards of snow. We did have a braai later. Only South Africans...

August really has been the bad weather month, we had more snow this week. Happily this time, there was a decent break in the weather and I was able to climb Tafelkoppie to play a bit (and check the remaining Albatross nests - not all play...). 

Even though the bad weather has kept us inside most days, things have been better this week. I think that it is because the arrival of the Agulhas is now so near it is almost tangible. This has made the boredom struck people in the Base realize that perhaps they actually are going home and they have been more upbeat.

Tafelkoppie, with South Peak to the left of centre and the top of Edinburgh Peak sticking up in the far distance

I have been reading a fascinating book, Mountains in the sea - The story of the Gough Island Expedition by Martin Holgate, an account of the first scientific expedition to Gough in 1956. It provides a wonderful insight into the history of Gough and Tristan da Cunha. The conditions they had to endure were far, far worse than what we have had to deal with. They all lived in a small hut at the Glen, cooked on a tiny gas stove, used candles for lighting and their only contact with the outside world was radio contact and passing ships. Despite all of this they managed to explore the entire island, survey it, discovered new species of plants, birds, fungi, mosses and insects. Mr Holgate writes quite frankly and says that there were never any serious disagreements or arguments in the team and they all left as friends still. They did have the advantage of being friends before they came here and a single unifying goal which is what our team has lacked. Without some common purpose (surviving twelve months is not a goal) to unify us, something to which we contribute which is greater than all of us we have failed to become a team. It has especially affected Leonie and Mornay because they came here as support staff with no real aim other than to make sure that the team members are able to do their jobs which is not a goal either really.

Their boredom has an upside though, quite a lot of team duties before takeover, principally cleaning, are already finished without any of the rest of us having to lift a finger. It has made life easier to a certain extent but I think that I would rather have had to clean more and deal with less psychological mess.

There is so little time left before the ships arrival now but I happy to say that I am ready to go home now and will not regret leaving terribly.

Stormy weather - 15 August to 21 August

Once again, the weather has dominated the proceedings this week, with two big storms passing over Gough. The first one was predicted to be huge and well, it wasn't. The second one however lived up to its billing. It dropped close on 200mm of rain on us in about thirty hours. Wind speed maxed out at 37 m/s (133.2 km/h) or in laymans terms, insanely fast! The apparent temperature at midday was -9... The sea has been spectacular too, with wave heights in excess of 15m. If I stood down at the crane, I could see perfect lines stacked to the horizon, a surfer's dream only one problem, there is nowhere to surf on this island. No points, no reefs and no beach breaks. The bottom drops away so steeply that there is no chance of a wave anywhere. Yet another thing to wait for... I shot some videos of the swell but the weather is playing merry hell with our satellite uplink so I could not load them in time. Next week I promise.

Gough is right in the middle of the circles. Pressure dropped all the way down to 963mb.

Monday was a nice day, Michelle and I went fishing at Snoekgat and caught lots of fish, enough to feed us all. It was the "freshest" supper we will have until we are on board the Agulhas. We sadly did not catch any Snoek, despite valiant efforts. I don't know what I am doing wrong, I have tried every type of lure from spinners to spoons to poppers and nothing works. Not to be I guess. Michelle did manage to catch two fish simultaneously though. I really am going to miss the fishing here, you catch a fish on about 8 of 10 casts and unlike at home where you carefully check to see if the fish are the correct size, here you hardly ever catch under size fish.

The smallest fish we caught

The big storm did drop the most snow yet but again as with the previous times, the weather was too unsettled to chance going to play in it. Next time...

Otherwise things have been more settled in the base. Mornay has decided not to join us at meals anymore for whatever reason. I am (and everyone else too) so over caring about why he is like he is. We have so little time left by ourselves on the island that we are not going to let him spoil it. He must just stay out of the way. We have all tried to help and failed. Ons kannie meer nie en ons gaan nie meer nie.

Hail, not snow

Angry sea.

The rain in the South Atlantic falls mainly here - 9 August to 14 August

Clouds are Gough's party piece, I have never seen such awesome ones as I have here.

Well thus far August has lived up to it's reputation as the month with the worst weather. Over the last two weeks we have only had a couple of days where it has not rained a lot. When it isn't raining, the wind has been blowing. All of this has played merry hell with my work schedule, I have been trying to do the final round of herbicide spraying at Snoekgat, Diesel Cove and Crane Point. I can't spray the herbicide when it is raining because that is just like pouring it into the sea and when it is windy, all I succeed in doing is covering myself in poison and getting none where it needs to be. Thankfully on Friday the weather was good enough and I was able to complete all the spraying.

Snow again.

We have even had some snow again to go with the bad weather, unfortunately it fell on Tuesday night and then rained almost continuously on Wednesday, only stopping for long enough for me to take the picture above and the panorama at the top of this post. The bad weather has meant that I have had plenty of free time to play with Hugin (hugin.sourceforge.net), which is simply the best, most user friendly panorama creator that I have ever found. I used it to make the panorama at the top and with a little help from Photoshop, the one below as well.

The view from the roof of the Base.

Sadly, along with the bad weather comes more cabin fever. Mornay has been on form this week. He refuses to talk to anyone, sulks in his room and is incredibly rude to everyone. John and Leonie have spoken to him on more than one occasion, asking that he at least attempt to be civil but he simply ignores them. He singles out Michelle as a particular target because he used or still does have a crush on her and she is not interested in him at all. I really don't care what he does with the rest of his time on the island, if he wants to spend it sulking in his room, I could not care less but he really does at least need to be civil. Manners cost nothing. The Department really needs to step up their psychological screening programme because I cannot understand how someone as obviously broken as he is got to the island.

GLS data from a logger recovered from a Skua. Gough Skuas, as with the Marion ones seem to spend lots of time off the Cape coast

Oh well, it really is not long now, the ship will be here in just over a month and in just under two months we will be docking in Cape Town. How nice that will be.

39 days and counting - 1 August to 8 August

An Atlantic Petrel, winkled from its burrow, ready to be measured, weighed , ringed and tagged (Photo by Michelle)

Well first of all, many apologies to those of you expecting your regular Monday morning fix of my ramblings but last night was forty days until the ship arrives, forty days with only the seven of us on the island. So we had a big party. I had planned to write this post earlier yesterday but I was stuck in the kitchen, cooking. It was my turn to cook and so I had to make all the food for the party and didn't get a chance to come and burble inanities to you, dear Faithful Reader.

Burrowscoping. My right arm is in the burrow up to my shoulder, I am holding the camera end of the burrowscope in my right hand (the silver tube is the battery pack) and the yellow box in my left hand is the monitor showing the images from the camera (Photo by Michelle)

It is now Monday and for some reason I do not have a hangover, I can't come up with a reason why. Things got a little crazy last night and because Robyn was there, I am sure that there will be lots of photographic and video evidence. Not that we will ever see it because getting photos out of Robyn is like getting blood from stones. Hopefully by the time we leave she will have relented and shared her photos with the rest of us.

A GLS mounted on the leg of an Atlantic Petrel (photo by Michelle)

August has lived up to its reputation as the worst weather month thus far. There was only one day last week that I could get to do some of the final round of herbicide spraying, every other day was either too windy, too rainy or both. I really hope that the weather will let up a little so I can finish the herbicide work (the last time EVER!). Otherwise in the gaps I have been doing some burrowscoping to recover more of the GLS on the Atlantic Petrels.

Michelle with an Atlantic Petrel. Sometimes their burrows are too deep to grab them and you have dig an alternative entrance and chase the bird out the other side.

Another reason to hope that the weather lets up a little is that cabin fever is setting in again. We all take it hard, especially now that there is so little time left on our own but since we are all experiencing the same feelings, we try our best to put on a brave face and at least pretend that all is well, even when we know that it is not. I say we but there is one exception: Mornay. Mornay is like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, except that the Mr Hyde personality is the most prominent one rather than the Dr Jekyll. He throws tantrums, refuses to eat with us, sulks in his room, doesn't greet people and is generally a thunder cloud of unpleasantness. John and Leonie, for some unfathomable reason, continue to humour him, saying that he is depressed and homesick and needs his space, as if none of the rest of us aren't. If anyone of the younger people in base was to behave as he does, we would be called into a meeting with John and Leonie and be told to act like adults and grow up. Oddly enough it seems that the most mature people on the island are the most immature. The next thirty nine days can't pass fast enough.

The preliminary data from a GLS recovered from an Atlantic Petrel. The red dot is Gough. It appears that they spend much time off the coast of Brazil and also at the the Falkland Islands. The lines heading out of the picture to the north are probably noise and will be removed once the analysis is complete.