At 3am we hit some rough waves which made sleeping very difficult. Rough by my standards is when I am rocked violently from side to side in my bed, followed by my cabin chair being flung across the floor, and when I can hardly stand up and the motto “one hand for the ship” becomes “two hands, arms and legs for the ship”. The Captain had said we were heading for bad weather so I felt pleased with myself that I had survived the night relatively unscathed (if rather tired) but when I later asked him how rough it was last night he laughed at me as if I was joking (I wasn’t …) and said “what, on a rocking scale? Oh probably about a … one”. That was not the answer I was hoping for – but, then again, it was only a week or so ago during the southward journey from the Falklands that the ship had experience a 38 degree roll so I guess this didn’t quite compare. I am slightly apprehensive as to what will come over the next few days, especially the journey from Signy to Bird Island, and Bird to the Falklands. Something to look forward to there then …

I wandered out on deck, marvelling at what I (at least) considered to be relatively large waves and also what really were, huge icebergs bobbing amongst the waves. We got to Signy a bit later than expected but it was too windy for anyone to land by Humber so we hung around to see if the weather would improve. No luck meant we continued further east to Laurie Island and Cape Geddes for the drop-off there, due to return to Signy in two days time with a trip ashore for all of us for a look round if we wish. Sounds good to me – let’s hope the weather is calm enough for us to land then!

So we set sail again in the evening, passing huge chucks of ice bobbing and rolling in the waves, submerging and re-emerging like eerie monsters of the deep in the growing darkness. Some more rough swells were followed by the calmest night yet. This is more like it!