Sienna Miller Request

We continue to dig in and grit our teeth. Each day we awaken to beautiful dawn skies but bastard wind.

The polar vortex and the core of the jet stream have, this season, chosen to lie right over the sub Antarctic island of South Georgia.

We are teased by the elements on a daily basis with random turbulence and downdraughts too intense to risk helicopter-baiting operations.

We are attempting to help return this remote iconic landscape to pre-European conditions. Removing the hardy mainland-evolved rats before they rid South Georgia of the delicate fauna they maraud, is akin to trying to get an invading Attila-the-Hun and his Hordes off an unarmed innocent Polynesian idyll before they kill all the local inhabitants.

Only it's not Polynesian sun here but an icy blast that the elemental sprites use to hold us, in the grip of a windy vice.

A request for urgent resupply comes into the main base via satellite phone text. One of our forward weather observation posts at Peggotty, (or 'Purgatory', as we all call it), a couple of hardy lads, Roger and Dickie, with single man tents, brave the primitive elements to report back the local wind conditions.

Peggotty requirements:

1. Another water jerry can.
2. Butter
3. Sienna Miller

We will be able to supply 2 out of the 3 of those when a helicopter manages to get up there.
If she had braved conditions at Peggotty 2 nights ago, Sienna would have had to survive the 80+mph winds that whistled through that exposed bluff.
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It is amazing just how rugged our 3 Bolkow helicopters are. It has proved impossible to anchor them to the ground here but so far they have survived everything the vortex has thrown at them.

These aren't youngsters either; the 3 helicopters have over 51,000 hours on the clock between them. They are all 40 years old. Born in the '70's they have been "Rockin' All Over The World" since then.

However I think I can guarantee that in their long flying life none of these 3 helicopters have previously been landed on a tiny sloping slipway (avoiding the tame seals underneath) and been winched up the gradient into a small, well-equipped and warm boat shed, for routine maintenance.

Extreme conservation sometimes calls for extreme measures.
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If by any unlikely chance you read this blog, Sienna and can help, the address of Roger and Dickie is:

No 1 and 2 The Tents,
Peggotty Bluff,
King Haakon Bay,
South Georgia.


Many thanks in advance.





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