Antarctic diary

Feeling the force

Composer Craig Vear arrives at Antarctica
Craig Vear at Signy, Antarctic
Craig Vear at Signy, Antarctic. Photograph: British Antarctic Survey
Week two

It's force four. We left Stanley escorted by a pod of those beautiful Hourglass dolphins, and shadowed by a herd of pterodactyls.

There's a slight feeling of apprehension leaving the relative safety of land and heading into the Southern ocean towards Antarctica (well, to Signy in the south Orkney islands). Still, what did I expect?

Force five. Force six. Force seven.

The sea is very rough, confused and menacing. We are crashing and banging through waves that sound like a rich Mahler symphony, with the howling wind taking the part of the string section. Feeling a bit dizzy: must lie down.

Force eight. Force nine.

All human whistling on board has stopped, and I am still lying down. The wind is 48 mph, gusting to 65. The Southern ocean is not letting us down although, having said that, 120mph gusts are possible. The ship, battling against the wind, has not made any headway for a day. Maximum leanage is 36 degrees.

Force eight to seven.

Phew. I'll get up now. Past the Antarctic convergence, through the Drakes Passage, and into iceberg territory. There's no visibility, but the radar shows hundreds of bergs.

Then the fog lifts, and it's at this point that you realise how big the icebergs are. The distant ones, the size of London, are colossal, but it's the smaller growlers, with beautiful cyan blues, that are astounding.

The mountains of Signy are in the distance, and penguins dart out of the way of the ship with disgruntled squarks. As we anchor, we are awestruck by these natural sculptures of ice, carved by some skilled and imaginative tool free from thought, choice and ego.

After all hands lug stores and machinery to the Signy base, I take a brisk walk up a mountain, down a glacier, over 10,000-year-old moss and into the busy hubbub of the penguin colony of Gourley point.

The smell and noise are impressive. The leopard seals are snoring. The fur seals are waiting, surrounded by squealing chinstrap penguins which watch and wait, ready to flee if a seal becomes peckish.

Stealthy skuas (a kind of seabird) steal the eggs, and the breeding Adelie penguins, which nest on pebbles, are busy stealing each other's pebbles, squabbling, growling, fornicating and, apparently, prostituting.

There's an early departure towards Bird Island and South Georgia in the pounding, pulsing, chugging, knocking, whining, howling, screeching, grinding royal research ship James Clark Ross. Then it's back on the donkey ride into Shackleton territory.


Today's best video

Today in pictures