Day 5
S80 23' 32.28", W80 32' 56.40"
///depleting.analytical.antenna
Progress is starting to pick up, and the wind has dropped. Martin has a tricky time with the sastrgui and has one spectacular fall. Fortunately no injuries, and the team is in good spirits.
“Hi good evening everyone, it’s Lou reporting in from day 5 now of the Adaptive Antarctica expedition.
Slightly better day for us today. Still pretty windy; you can probably hear it battering the tent again. But it’s eased off to around 20 knots, which has definitely made life a bit easier for us. And we’ve definitely made some better progress. We’ve passed through a significant waypoint today, called Three Sails, which is actually three nunataks, which are mountain peaks which poke through the Antarctic ice sheet. We made it to those, and then we had a change of direction, which actually meant the wind wasn’t quite so head-on, it was more of a sort of side wind. But then it also meant that we were cross-graining over sastrugi; the sastrugi is these rock-hard ridges of ice, that we’re skiing over. It can be a bit challenging, and cause a few falls. And that was definitely a bit trickier going over those. And Martin had a pretty spectacular fall today. Straight over onto his back. I definitely provided a bit of comedy, and had to go over there and get his skis off and get him back up again. He was cursing for a while, and then eventually saw the funny side.
We’ve made good progress; 11.4 nautical miles, which is new personal best for us, so we’re really pleased with that, and we’re on our way to our next waypoint, which is around 17 nautical miles. So hopefully a couple of days and we’ll hit the next waypoint as well.
Martin’s still finding bits of this expedition challenging; eating and drinking are definitely a bit of a problem for him. There’s been quite a bit of dry-retching going on at the breaks, but I think again it’s just getting used to the rigours of this routine and he’ll settle into it and things will get easier.
But we’re doing well, despite the challenges that Martin has with his arm. We’re adapting all the routines and we’re working out systems to make things more efficient. So really enjoying working together on all the challenges that this expedition is throwing at us. We’ve got a long way to go but we’re really starting to ramp things up now.
Looking forward to the weeks ahead.
Martin will be updating you tomorrow night.
Onwards!”
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