Winter events: A race, film festival, and birthday

Winter in the Antarctic and sub-antarctic are full of traditions, some between BAS bases, and some between international bases. Below are two of them.


Race across Antarctica
Most years, British bases compete in a 'race across Antarctica', with teams of 6 attempting to cover 4,860 km over the course of 2 months. We finished that distance in a few weeks, so have been going for the 9,600 km total. Activities have different weightings, so swimming 3 km is equal to walking 15 km. I've been pretty busy with the leopard seal round, which is a 4 km route every day, so that slowly builds up. Non-weighted, I have currently gone 481.5 km, 161.5 of which is from walking. The exercise bike is the most efficient way of racking up distance, even though it's weighted as 1:1. Ian and Tim haven't spent much time off base in the last few months (soon to change for Tim!), so they've been on the bike everyday whilst watching films, and have exceeded 2000 km on their own! To our knowledge it is the first time Bird Island has won the race, so we're very happy with that.

48 hour Antarctic film festival
Each year, Scott base (NZ) organises a film festival between all Antarctic and sub-antarctic bases. There are a few rules to this process, with films having to be made and edited within 48 hours (starting Friday night, ending Sunday night). There are also a few things that must be included, which are chosen by other bases. This year there was:

1. A prop = a stethoscope
2. A line = 'May the force be with you'
3. A scene = catwalk
4. A sound = elephant trumpetting
5. A character = a mythical creature

Bird Island has a brief history of entering parodies, with previous films including James Bond, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and The Avengers. This year we decided to make fun of Game of Thrones, which included a lot of silly death scenes, including falling off a rope whilst taking a 'selfie', and drowning whilst trying to catch pokemon on Pokemon Go.

A birthday
On the 11th August, I turned 26. As it was the first birthday since April, everyone went all out and ensured I had a great day. The main theme of the day was food, and there was A LOT of it. It started with a pancake breakfast, cooked by Lucy our devoted winter station leader and albatross botherer. Ian went out on the lep round in horrible weather, giving me a much appreciated day off. I spent some time watching TV and reading my new book (by John Aitchison, who spent awhile filming fur seals and albatross here), whilst drinking coffee out of my new enamel mug. I called home and Kathryn, and then we had a brilliant afternoon tea, with scones, truffles and smoked salmon and cream cheese topped bread. I'm a fan of afternoon tea, especially scones so this went down very well. I was also very lucky to receive hand-made gifts from my base mates. There was a photo frame made by Ian, with photos of a leopard seal kill, and me measuring another seal. I also got a great trio of seals. I'd been debating making some similar to the three fur seals we have on the living room wall, so I was chuffed to receive a leopard seal, a fur seal, and an elephant seal!

A trio of seals (Lep, furry, ellie)

My new mug (the cup....)

A lovely frame and photos

A few hours later, we had tasty steak and chips, and then watched the other film festival entries which we voted for the best overall film, best cinematography, best sound, and best editing.

Our final film can be seen here:
https://vimeo.com/177942571