Halley |
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Copyright © 2003 Kevin O'Rourke The site is a work in progress, the 'Album' page in each section contains some photos but only some sections have much text. |
October 17 is now an important date for me, it was the day in 1997 when I left behind my friends and family and set off to spend two years in a place I knew very little about.
Of course it's nothing like that these days. The physical challenges of life in Antarctica have been reduced by technology and experience. The social and personal challenges remain. Some of these first presented themselves during the two months sailing to Halley, others lurked until the depths of winter. I kept a diary right from when we sailed from Grimsby in 1997 until we reached the Falklands in March 2000. The rest of this section is mostly taken from my diary, which was largely written for my family and was sent back in weekly instalments. The only problem is that I've never got round to converting the diary into a readable form. Sorry about that, you can look at the pictures instead. Where is Halley?75°35'S, 26°31'W. As you can see from the map Halley isn't actually on land but on a floating ice shelf. The shelf is constantly moving so the exact position changes from day to day. Why?This is a question I didn't ask myself for a while, just letting myself be carried along in the excitement and adventure of preparing to leave the world for two years. One simple and obvious reason was to avoid the responsibility of a "real" job, a sort of Peter Pan reflex. In the end I think it was just a matter of trusting my instincts. It felt like the right thing to do at the time, looking back on it I'd say it was. Where can I find out more?Have a look at the links here journeys/Zintro.html last updated: Fri Feb 29 14:17:25 2008 |