Day 15

Kit everywhere, lots of banter.

Our first day as a whole team and after some much needed sleep and more importantly much needed showers for the sailors, we attacked the many and mammoth preparations essential for the expedition. Now with added time pressures due to Tony’s boat apparently being serviced and maintained by a poorly qualified moped engineer, everyone was focused to get the work done.

My day began with a crash course in how to use a pop-riveter. Ironically, they selected the one team member who struggles to hang a picture safely and correctly to retrofit 16 pulcs with a bespoke compression strap system to ensure the precious food and mission essential stores stays safely attached to the pulks. Despite several near misses, a cut foot involving a large kitchen knife, drilling out the occasional incorrectly installed rivet with a traditional geared hand drill that even my grandad would have scoffed at, the near loss of an eye – mission success. But yes……I hear you ask……bungees probably would have worked too. But this is what happens when two military doctors are left unsupervised without an SNCO to curtail good ideas and over engineering!!!!

After I completed the necessary Near Miss paperwork and had a lie down in a dark room for a few moments, I joined the food prep team. If a stranger were to peer through the window at that time, they might be forgiven for suspecting some kind of illegal sweat shop or drugs factory had infiltrated the sleepy Iceland cul-de-sac as several of us meticulously filled the 240+ zip lock bags of food laid across the floorplan of our apartment. Roughly 5500 calories were shoehorned into bags, consisting of freeze-dried meals, nuts, protein and energy bars, chocolate, dried sausage, cheese, coffee and most importantly – Haribo. This calorific horror show was then bagged into six larger bin bags to make organisation easier once on the ice, and then packed into the large pulk bags. The view now resembled eight neatly fastened ‘body bags’ – now would be a really inconvenient time for the landlord to pop round.

As if our absurd looking behaviour hadn’t drawn enough questionable attention from the local populace, we decamped ourselves into the local park behind our apartment to practice dry drills for crevasse rescue and to optimise our pulk pulling systems having learned some lessons during our crossing of the Hardangervidda in April. Luckily no Icelanders were harmed during this serial – miraculous really as the sight of seven slightly confused people in harnesses wielding ropes, slings and pulks in an area normally reserved for picnics, joggers and cyclists nearly caused some cyclists to fall off their bikes from staring at us so intently.

Back into the apartment and tip toeing around the body bags to begin packing our own individual pulk bags containing polar clothing, specialist equipment and share the team equipment evenly. Despite going firm back in the UK on what I was and was not going to pack, I’m now being swayed by the social proofing in the room and questioning my decision to bring only one pair of pants for the crossing!

The last job of the day was for me to attach my fur ruff to my polar jacket. Supremely confident in my ability to glue it on myself rather than pay a professional to stitch it due to a childhood spent watching Blue Peter. This overconfidence resulted in glue all over the table, on my jacket and the on the wrong side of the Velcro strip. It’s not pretty, I’m not proud of it, but its attached and unique in its own way.