Hello Everyone!
May I firstly say a big `thank you’ for all of the fantastic pictures and letters you have been sending me. I’ve loved receiving lots of post and it has really brightened up my day when your letters and pictures have arrived. I have put all your pictures on display in HMS ENDURANCE – don’t they look fantastic?
`A Deck’ Gallery
As I write, we have started our journey back to Portsmouth. We have finished our last trip down to the Antarctic for this year and it was every bit as good as our other visits. What was different this time though was the weather, as at this time of year the summer is ending and the long nights start to draw in. During the winter in Antarctica, some parts of the continent like the South Pole get no daylight at all! Can you imagine what it must be like to get up in the dark, spend all day in the dark and then go to bed in the dark?
HMS Endurance in Deception Island
One of the best places we visited during our last work period was called Deception Island. This is a huge volcano that rises from the seabed. The top of the volcano, or crater as it is known is at sea level and this means that we could take HMS ENDURANCE into it! It wasn’t dangerous as this volcano was dormant, which means it is sleeping and will not erupt.
We all went ashore at Deception Island and the water was very warm - so warm in fact that the water was steaming. The sand also felt really warm between my toes. The seals we saw really seemed to enjoy lying on the warm sand and we all felt very lucky to visit Deception Island, as it is the only volcano in the world that a ship can get into like this.
Because the season was starting to change to winter in Antarctica, before we left, it snowed quite a lot. Something that Reckless and I have discovered this deployment is that snowflakes come in an endless variety of beautiful shapes. We’ve been looking at snowflakes with the help of a magnifying glass and snowflakes always have six sides to them. Some are called stellars, if they have 6 limbs, while others are called plates, if they have a more hexagonal crystal. Have a look at our pictures and see if you can tell which snowflakes are stellars (with 6 limbs) or plates (with a hexagonal shape)?
Snowflakes
You can create your own paper snowflakes by folding a circular piece of paper into twelfths and cutting out shapes, rather like a paper doily. Reckless and I have made lots of paper snowflakes to go in our cabin to remind us of the snow in Antarctica.
To pass the time on our journey home from Antarctica, Reckless and I have been doing the following things and we think you should have a go at them:
- Design and draw a vehicle, which you think could travel from one side of Antarctica to the other. Try to consider all the hazards you and your vehicle might meet on the way – ice crevasses, blizzards, slippery, icy surfaces.
- Make and play a board game about an expedition in Antarctica. Perhaps use a
`snakes and ladders’ type game, but change the hazards and `lucky spots’ to reflect what might happen on such an expedition e.g. blizzards, fine weather, mountains, melting ice sheets, get a lift in a `helo’ from HMS Endurance, food or equipment problems, etc.
We now have another exciting phase of our deployment to look forward to as we reach South America. I promise to send more letters from all our stops to come.
Yours aye,
Anchor.
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