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 Name: Mark Jameson
Age: 39
Occupation: Lynx Helicopter Pilot. I left my previous job after I realised I would never get outdoors much. So, before I got too old, I applied to join the Royal Navy as a Pilot. Whilst at college I had been in the Royal Marine Reserves but if I had joined the Corps full time I would have been too old before I had a chance at flying training. So having passed the aptitude and medical boards, I went to Britannia Royal Naval College for Initial Officer Training.
For committed aviator types only one thing counts, your wings and it is a lot of hard work and sweat to earn them. My first proper job was to go off to the Caribbean for 8 months on HMS NEWCASTLE, a type 42 destroyer. After some time in the Adriatic, Gulf and Antarctica, I was sent off to become a Helicopter Instructor. After a few years back at Royal Naval Air Station Yeovilton with 702 Naval Air Squadron, I had the fantastic opportunity of going back to Antarctica as the Flight Commander of 212 Flight HMS ENDURANCE. This is where my connection to ENDURANCE KAYAK comes in.
Home Town: West Lydford, Somerset
Excited about:
You only get one chance to do something 'for the first time'. No one has ever kayaked around James Ross Island before, so I’m excited that we have a chance to be the first people to do this. Personally, I don’t get that many chances to do something no one else has done so this expedition is an exciting challenge to me.
Biggest challenge of the Expedition:
Keeping all my camera kit dry and the batteries charged! It is really difficult to keep anything completely dry in a sea kayak; everything just becomes a varied degree of damp. My nightmare is that I break an important bit of kit on the first day and have to carry the useless junk with me for the rest of the trip! The other problem will be to keep enough battery charge to run the video equipment. I will be taking a solar panel and extra batteries with me, but if I end up with no power then the kit is as good as broken. But I hope all the extra hassle that I’m giving myself will result in some great pictures.
Hope for the Expedition:
A spectacular day with blue skies and zero wind on the far side of James Ross Island. This is asking quite a bit as the weather is unpredictable, but I can imagine kayaking between sea ice and ice shelf on a mirror-like sea looking at the reflections of the 2000ft amphitheatres of cliffs. So I had better make it happen…
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