weather, which continues at this moment. Sleep was very hard to come
by due to all the pitching and rolling, which meant that at one
minute, my feet were being squashed at the end of the bed, and the
next minute, my head. Coupled with all the creaking coming from the
disused beds above, and to the side of me, as well as everything else
in the cabin, it's no wonder I woke up feeling bad. However, I'm sure
I'm not half as bad as some people on the ship after a drunken night.
As soon as I got out of bed, I managed to slide half way out of my
room on my feet, which sounds more fun that it actually was. The
constant battle to stay upright is rather tiring, and a good few
times I have fallen onto walls, or other people. At lunch, as soon as
I sat down, my chair (along with everyone else's) went sliding across
the floor, making for rather difficult eating conditions, but amusing
nonetheless.
Our "marine" fancy dress theme produced some excellent costumes from
the few materials that were onboard - I was actually really
impressed, but also equally disturbed some one in particular that I
don't wish to mention. One of the funniest was when our Voyage
Leader, and Chief Scientist, came out wearing crew overalls with 2
hard hats as breasts, and two for arse-cheeks. It produced a good
many laughs, and it was strange how comfortable he seemed...! After
some "Antarctic bottom water" (aka vodka) was spread around in sample
tubes, the party really got started, but at this point I had to leave
as I am still trying to get into a normal sleeping pattern.
Although the rolling was sure to have made a few hung-over people
feel even worse, I wasn't actually too bad (I did succumb to taking a
sea sickness tablet which may explain it. As the sun was shining
brilliantly, I even ventured outside onto deck, which I'm not sure if
I was supposed to do considering the ship was rolling at 45 degrees!
I managed to stay on my feet the whole time though, and the fresh air
definitely woke me up a bit. I also spent a bit of time up on the
bridge, watching the ship crash into waves which we subsequently
turned into huge swathes of sea-spray spreading in all directions; an
excellent sight to see!
Not much else to report - the rolling put an unfortunate end to my
report writing.
Distance to Hobart - 650nm (we have slowed considerably due to the
swell)
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