Antarctic diary: Polar year
We've had three days at sea, heading ever further South.
The Captain on HMS Endurance, Bob Tarrant, has decided that it would not be time-effective to try to reach Thurston Island.
Satellite images show a build-up of sea ice, so we might spend a week trying to get close and still not make it. Or worse, get stuck.
But that means we've more chance of getting the scientists into sites on Alexander Island and around the Ronne entrance.
The Ronne entrance marks the junction between the Antarctic Peninsula and the bulk of Western Antarctica, and the limits of the sea ice between Alexander Island and the mainland.
At 73 degrees South, it's as far as we can get and an exciting target for all the scientists.
Penguin alert
We've had three days of watching from the wardroom, pacing the monkey deck, practising abseiling down the front of the ship and - for Adam, one of our more enthusiastic field assistants - abseiling down from the bridge to clean the windows! 
We've ridden out a storm with 40-knot winds, and the icebergs have got bigger and more numerous.
Last night they were particularly beautiful in the evening light. Now the waiting is almost over and we're scheduled to join the scientists on Eklund Island.
We've become used to seeing Weddell and crabeater seals on low icebergs; even the occasional minke whale, along with skuas and snow and Antarctic petrel. But we've had a real and unexpected treat this morning.
I missed the first call of "penguins on the port bow". By the time I got on deck they were Lowry matchstick penguins in the distance. But still bigger than Adelie penguins, and you don't get kings this far south. 
I went to my cabin to change into warm clothing for our outing, only to see a single emperor penguin drift past my porthole on a small piece of ice. By the time I grabbed the camera and reached the deck, there were more.
Rocky history
One iceberg with two seals and 10 emperors! I didn't think they were found here. Nor did anyone else we can contact.
Later, we saw a group with four big fluffy chicks. If they are breeding here it constitutes a colony, possibly one that's new to science. 
This time the helicopters are flying in pairs. We have to go inland over the ice shelf, and one can act as search and rescue for the other in an emergency.
The first flight is for reconnaissance, then the geologists go in with three Royal Marines who are setting up geodesic survey points. Then it's our turn, along with soil scientists and a biologist.
This part of Eklund Island is low and gently sloping, with a few rocks smoothed by ice, sticking through the snow. 
Phil Leat, a geologist from the British Antarctic Survey, tells me it's 130 million-year-old granite, cut by dykes of dark rock from the roots of a later volcano.
This stretch of coast is near to the last split in the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana, from which New Zealand drifted away to leave Antarctica as it is today. But there are signs of more recent rifting too. Perhaps it will split again.
Tough life
Another team of glacial geologists from the British Geological Survey in Edinburgh are also taking samples - with hammers and a petrol driven rock saw. They are after slices of the top five centimetres of the rocks for a technique called cosmogenic dating.
The surface of the Earth is constantly bombarded by cosmic rays.
The impacts create new sorts of atoms - isotopes - in the minerals in the rock. But cosmic rays don't penetrate far through rock or ice. So, if you have a fresh surface, ground down by ice, the isotopes only begin to accumulate when the ice retreats. Measure the isotopes and you have the age when the ice melted.
There's even life here! Wherever a rock sticks out above the snow, there are lichens.
Algae and mosses follow the crevices, perhaps with nematode worms and mites that will only be revealed under the microscope. Everything is tiny - anything that lifts more than a few millimetres from the rock will get frozen or blown away. 
This is life at the limits; but the soil scientists still hope to find a functioning bacterial ecosystem in the tiny pockets of earth.
Back on the bridge of HMS Endurance we watch as hydrographers conduct what is called swath bathymetry, sending out a wide fan of sonar signals to reflect off the sea floor.
A computer produces a plot of the seabed in three dimensions and it is obvious that there are long grooves gouged in it by ancient ice that once reached this far out to the sea.
When we look at the track of our ship over the previous few hours, superimposed on the best existing chart, it seems as if we have sailed a full eight nautical miles into the ice shelf. The maps will need updating; this section of the ice shelf retreated more than a decade ago.
Up early today - hardly first light as it hardly gets dark, but at 7am there is a special quality to the light.
Today it's crisp low sunlight on the sparkling sprinkling of last night's snow, with a backdrop of dark clouds to highlight the radiant icebergs in the bay.
Rothera Point is an easy 40-minute stroll along the beach around the rocky promontory, just the job to freshen up for breakfast.
The "bergy bits" of shattered ice floating in the bay make gentle clunks and clinks as they jostle in the soft swell.
Picking my way around the rocky shore I almost trip over one inflated rubber boulder that turns out to be a Weddell seal. These are the yellow Labradors among seals - fat and friendly. It scarcely bothers to open an eye or raise its head.
Just round the corner there's a big, fluffy, fully grown penguin chick, with one parent. There are Adelie penguins - my first of the true Antarcticans, not found far away from this great white continent.
Real deal
After a quick breakfast in Rothera's comfortable dining room, it's back to HMS Endurance for departure. Except that it isn't. The poor engineers have been up all night fixing the starboard engine. It's all repaired, but the oil is so cold it won't refill quickly, so we've another day at the research station.
We are already booked on a helicopter flight, which now departs from Rothera's runway. We've no destination, just recording some linking narration against the roar of the rotors. 
It might seem an extravagance for radio, but there is no substitute for the vividness, accuracy and honesty it lends to reports. We go swooping among icebergs - even land on one - and then go up the cracked and jumbled face of the glacier, high over snowfields and a 3,000m mountain top, then back down, opening the door so there is nothing between us and Antarctica.
I'm just wondering if we'll still be around for dinner and another walk at Rothera when the ship's hooter sounds, summoning everyone back aboard for a hasty departure ahead of schedule.
A large iceberg has broken apart and fragments weighing many tonnes are drifting towards us. We escape intact and head on South.
I woke up to find HMS Endurance sailing to-and-fro across Ryder Bay, next to the UK's Rothera Research station, surveying the sea bed.
After breakfast, one of the ship's boats is launched to carry a Navy team on a boat camp, surveying nearby islands. They will stay around Rothera tomorrow while we sail even further south.
Eventually, the neat buildings and airstrip of Rothera come into view. Standing on the Bridge listening to the commands, it seems like a delicate ballet as the vast ship literally inches into the wharf, avoiding an inconvenient iceberg nearby.
I've a lot to accomplish today, as several science teams have just returned to Rothera from "deep field" expeditions over the Antarctic summer into the heart of the continent. I want to catch them for interviews before they move on.
There's a tantalising delay as we tie up, before Rothera Station Commander Steve Hinde comes aboard to welcome us and brief us on the safety rules at this busy outpost.
In the summer, about 120 scientists and support staff are based here. In the winter it's down to just 18 souls.
There's a good airstrip of fine, compacted gravel and a hangar for the British Antarctic Survey's Dash-7 and four Twin Otter aircraft.
They ferry in supplies and personnel from Chile and the Falklands, and take them on over the ice, often via the blue ice runway and re-fuelling post known as Sky Blu.
By the time presenter Gabrielle Walker and I get ashore, the British Antarctic Survey's wonderful press officer Athena Dinar has gone ahead of us and made contact with the key researchers we want to meet.
But before we do so, it's off to the other end of the station with all our communications gear to get a clear view to the satellite in the north.
It seems bizarre to be setting up what is essentially a mini studio on a beach in gentle snow, with the soft sound of small icebergs jostling in the ripples.
We get a good signal back to London and Gabrielle is interviewed by Five Live about the signs of climate change down here.
She's well-qualified to answer, having a passion for ice and being co-author (with Sir David King, who was until recently the UK's government chief scientific adviser) of The Hot Topic, a definitive guide to climate change.
The broadcast goes well, in spite of some challenging questions about the amount of carbon dioxide released by journalists visiting Antarctica.
We're ready for lunch and it's a joy to discover fresh, crisp salad and home-made bread in Rothera's dining room.
After lunch, there is a chance to meet the scientists who have just returned from the field.
Three are back from Lake Ellsworth, a lake buried under 3,000 metres of ice in the Western Antarctic interior, where they've been letting off small explosions to create seismic waves and measure the depth and shape of the lake.
Another team has just returned from the Pine Island Glacier, a vast river of ice that seems to be accelerating, transporting ice with the potential to raise global sea levels.
I'll report on their science elsewhere, but it's exciting to meet people with such tales to tell.
Then we go down to visit Professor Lloyd Peck in the station's aquarium. He has been studying the marine invertebrates around Rothera.
You might think that the cold, harsh Antarctic environment would lead to marine creatures being stunted and small.
Not so; the low temperatures decrease metabolism so the cost of living is low. Cold water can also dissolve more oxygen and both factors mean that animals can grow large.
Lloyd likens it to moving to a cheap neighbourhood where you can afford a much bigger house. So there are sponges that a diver can climb into, starfish the size of a dinner plate, sea spiders bigger than your hand, and something like a marine woodlouse you wouldn't want to meet on a dark night - the monster in the film Alien is said to have been inspired by it!
Finally, we visit the communications tower for a routine short wave link-up with scientists working high up Mount Haddington on James Ross Island at the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula.
We'll be visiting them later in this trip to fly them and their 24 tonnes of equipment out.
They're drilling an ice core into a glacier in the hope that it will tell them about climate changes in the region over the last 10,000 years.
The good news is that they've drilled down 345 metres and are ahead of schedule.
Weather permitting, there's a plan to land a plane on the mountain the next day to bring some of the ice cores out.
The radio operator asks field assistant Sam if they need any "treats" (snacks and chocolate).
"No, we're fine for treats," she replies, "as long as we get the extra beer we've ordered, we'll be happy!"
It's time to test some of the technology we have brought with us. The key component is a small satellite-receiver that looks like a large laptop computer.
I set it up on one of the top deck decks of HMS Endurance, where we have a clear view to stern to the North.
When first switched on, the device finds its own position using GPS (Global Positioning System) satellite signals. Then I angle it on a tripod towards where I think the Inmarsat Atlantic West satellite must be, 36,000km above the equator.
From this latitude, it means pointing it almost horizontal and I make sure that no one can walk in front of it to receive a dose of microwaves and disconnect us in the process.
We joke that this far South, even a penguin walking in front of it might take us off the air. An audible beep rises in pitch with the signal strength as we lock on to the satellite.
I find it amazing that, with lightweight equipment, I can get a broadband Internet connection on a moving ship crossing the Antarctic Circle.
Later in our expedition we will be using the link-up for studio quality connections to BBC radio programmes back in London. Today we are trying a different technology (a voice over Internet (VOI) provider) to record interviews.
The first is to my colleague Gareth Mitchell, who presents the World Service programme, Digital Planet. He is sitting in his home in London using his ordinary laptop computer and yet we can talk in reasonable quality and with remarkably little delay. We discuss digital communications to remote places.
The next call is in connection with a BBC supported project called School Report.
For this, hundreds of schools across the UK are putting together their own news programmes for radio, TV or online, with the pupils conducting interviews, selecting stories and editing and presenting the material. Our link-up is with Moorhead College in Lancashire.
Just as we start recording, a helicopter comes in to land on HMS Endurance, drowning out our voices but providing some exciting sound effects. When it has shut down, young girls at the school put a series of remarkably perceptive questions to my colleague and climate expert Gabrielle Walker.
We are as thrilled as they are to be able to speak so clearly over such distances.
After lunch it is announced that we have crossed the Antarctic Circle and that the channel between Adelaide Island and the Antarctic Peninsula is sufficiently free of ice for us to go the more direct and most picturesque route to Rothera, the UK's main research station in the region.
It is a magical journey among floating icebergs, some of them a rich blue colour indicating ancient ice with few bubbles. The ice may have formed far inland millions of years ago, to be carried inexorably to the sea in glaciers.
The speed of those glaciers is a crucial factor affecting sea level around the world. If they accelerate as the region warms, it could be bad news for Pacific atolls and low-lying regions as distant as Bangladesh or even London.
The first of two very welcome days at sea as we continue south towards the British Antarctic Survey's Rothera Research Station.
But the days are not empty nor boring, nor is our course direct.
HMS Endurance is sailing to and fro in an area known as the Grandidier Channel.
The crew is surveying the sea floor with a sonar technique known as swath bathymetry, which can map the sea floor not only directly beneath the ship but in a wide swath to the sides as well. Much of this area has never been charted in detail before.
Although we are not going ashore ourselves, it is still a busy day and the dreaded wake-up whistle, piped to loudspeakers in every cabin, comes an hour early at 0600.
Members of the ship's company embark by helicopter to set up geodesic survey points on nearby islands.
In some cases the old charts are very inaccurate; at one point, while I am on the Bridge, the Officer of the Watch announces that, according to the charts, we are sailing across dry land.
Fortunately, the old charts are inaccurate and we are still in 150 metres depth of water!
The helicopters are busy today. A small group is visiting Vernadsky base, formerly Britain's Faraday base but now operated by Ukraine. They still use one of the original instruments that first spotted the hole in the ozone layer.
The captain is also off on a diplomatic visit, to the US Palmer Station, looking very dapper in his flight suit.
Life on an Antarctic research ship is a mixture of frantic activity and long waits.
The ship's officers are trying to integrate so many different activities among the naval personnel, the survey teams and the research scientists, not to mention their BBC media guests, that it is hard to please all the people all the time.
This is particularly true given the unpredictability of the weather and the occasional need for mechanical repairs. They do a brilliant job and life is never dull.
Just when you think you might have some free time, another activity intervenes.
Today, it's time to brush up on the safety training we received several months ago in Derbyshire. We go down to the Forward Hold where Mark Gorin, one of the British Antarctic Survey's polar guides, has set up ropes down the side of stacked cargo containers.
These field assistants are the unsung heroes of Antarctic research. Tough and experienced in polar survival and mountaineering, they go ashore with every team, ensuring that they have all the right clothing, safety equipment and emergency supplies.
These are the people who lead the way if we have to rope up to cross crevassed glaciers. They are also the people who would fall first into any crevasse they had not spotted and these are also the people who train us to get them out if such an event should happen.
We practice the knots to rope up and learn how to anchor ourselves first with an ice axe and then with snow stakes, should the person ahead of us suddenly disappear into the ground.
We are trained how to abseil down into the crevasse to help an injured colleague, how to climb back out again on ropes using jumas to clamp to the ropes, and we learn how to set up a system of pulleys to haul an injured or unconscious person from the crevasse.
As we continue to sail south, hoping to reach further than HMS Endurance has ever gone before, we are issued with yet more layers of insulating clothing, feeling more and more like spherical penguins in our movements.
After lunch I am summoned to the Bridge. Captain Bob Tarrant sits me down on the stool next to his own high seat. I wonder for a few seconds what I have done wrong, and if I'm going to be disciplined.
But the twinkle in his eye gives the Captain away and he tells me to put my hands on the controls. I am now driving the ship.
The Officer of the Watch calls out instructions; I repeat them and apply the settings to the tiller controls.
It takes a little while to get used to the time lag between changing the controls and the ship responding, and to adjusting for the sideways wind pressure on the vessel, but Endurance is remarkably responsive and I manage to hold a course that doesn't zig-zag too much.
Now, we are crossing Crystal Sound, a magical landscape of still, cold water, distant snow-capped peaks and numerous icebergs.
Humpback and minke whales breach and dive in the distance, and many of the lower icebergs carry Weddell or crab-eater seals, lounging in the snow like giant slugs.
Snow petrels glide around the ship. One catches something from the still water. Immediately a skua appears from nowhere and swoops in, trying to steal the catch.
The petrel passes close to a Weddell seal on an iceberg; which raises its head. The skua veers off and the petrel gets its meal.
It's a murky morning as HMS Endurance sails slowly among the islands towards Port Lockroy.
Icebergs loom through the mist and there's light snow in the air. Port Lockroy is a rather grand name for a small rock with a couple of huts on it, but it's one of the most visited places in Antarctica.
About 17,000 people came here last year with an average of two cruise ships per day. Built in 1944 as part of a secret British operation to monitor German activity in Antarctic waters, it later became a British Antarctic Survey research station.
It is now run by the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust which monitors the local penguins, run a museum and souvenir shop and stamp visitors' passports.
After breakfast on board, we form a chain to pass 60-something boxes of supplies from the hold to the Quarterdeck, where they're loaded into Endurance's two rigid inflatable boats and taken ashore.
One of the boats comes back with Rachel Hazell, Port Lockroy's postmistress, penguin monitor and a former artist-in-residence for HMS Endurance.
She knows our ship has a facility for a hot bath and, with no running water on the island, is keen to make use of it.
Then there is a chance for many of the ship's company to go ashore. Unfortunately, in these freezing waters, that means another even more cumbersome rubber immersion suit, even for the short boat ride to Lockroy.
The first things my eyes notice on arrival are penguins - hundreds of them. There are, in fact, 600 breeding pairs of gentoo on the island, concentrated like loyal supporters around the Union Jack that flatters proudly from a pole in front of the main hut.
My nose notices the penguins too! It's not so much the birds, they bathe regularly in the cold, clear waters; it's what they leave behind.
Once I climb out of my immersion suit I'm very glad of the wellies manager Rick Atkinson has lent to me.
I ask him how he copes with the smell day-in day-out: "What's smell? After a day or two there is no detectable odour," he says.
The site of Port Lockroy was originally picked because it was free of penguins. They only began turning up in the 1970s. There's a new study looking to see if human visitors stress the penguins.
It seems to be quite the opposite; the flightless birds collect around the huts where their predators fear to go. However, there was one skua picking the eyes out of a dead penguin chick.
But 760 penguin chicks have been born there this year - the population of gentoo is expanding and spreading south. Perhaps this could be another consequence of a warming world?
There is another curious bird among the penguins. At first I thought Rick must be keeping small white chickens. They turn out to be American sheath-bills. I don't like to think what nutrition they may find in the penguin waste!
All too soon it's back to Endurance, but another treat awaits us. The clouds are lifting as we enter the Lemaire Channel - a narrow, fjord-like passage between towering rocky peaks and snowfields, littered with icebergs.
It's as if someone had taken the Alps, increased the snow and ice and half submerged them in the sea.
Today, the port hole lets in brilliant sunshine across a calm sea littered with icebergs.
At the 0800 briefing, it's confirmed that we will get our second outing today, this time to Gant Island, between Anvers and Brabant Islands to the west of the Antarctic Peninsula.
We'll be travelling with soil scientists from Stirling University and the Scottish Crops Research Institute.
Somehow, the goon suit seems more bearable today, perhaps this is a result of familiarity, or perhaps it is the shorter wait for our helicopter after the other has gone out whale watching, fitted with a special camera from the BBC Natural History Unit.
Digging for dirt
We land in a beautiful spot on level snow next to a pebbly beach littered with moulted seal fur and whale bones.
On one side, a rocky headland, on the other a steep cliff with lots of soil-filled crevices - and a wonderful snow slope for sliding down on the seat of your waterproof trousers.
Researcher David Hopkins is already scrabbling away in the thin soil that has been washed down on to the snow from among the rocks.
Each of his small sample tubes of soil, he says, probably contains 10 million or more bacteria from thousands of species.
These bacteria are the heart and lungs of the ecosystem, albeit in the harsh conditions of this continent of faint heart and shallow breath.
Some samples he'll simply keep in the fridge to examine later, but others he plunges into a mixture of dry ice and alcohol at -80C (-112F), freezing the genes of the bacteria in order to reveal their activity at the time they were collected rather than after a journey around the world.
Across the little bay, less than 100 metres away, is the tip of a glacier. It's deeply crevassed and looks most unstable in the afternoon sun.
We've more time here than we had yesterday so as we eat our sandwiches, I set up a microphone on a rock and leave the recorder running.
Ten minutes later it captures the rumble and crash as a block of ice the size of a large car crashes into the bay.
I turned to examine some rocks by the shore and glanced back to see a gentoo penguin just a few metres behind me. I could swear he wasn't there a minute ago.
He seems completely unconcerned as I clamber past to get my camera and only mildly interested when I return to snap him.
While we wait for the helicopter, goon seats in the snow, a little troupe of chin strap penguins head towards us through the water and hop out to pose for photos in the sunshine. This must be Antarctic at its best.
The pilot does not have to apologise for keeping us waiting, but as a treat on the way back he takes a small detour around a family of humpback whales, circling in the crystal waters and waving with their great fins and tails.
When I looked out of my porthole at 0700 this morning, I could see the first hint of a distant snow-capped peak. This came after a restless night subjected to random G-forces as we pitched and rolled between 5m-high waves. But this is still not Antarctica.
We're passing the western end of the South Shetland Isles, a chain that runs east to Elephant Island where Shackleton overwintered in 1916. 
But the Antarctic Peninsula is getting ever nearer, the sea ever calmer and the sky ever clearer. The plan is, when we get within flying range of some of the little-explored islands close to the continent, to get a helicopter out and drop a party of scientists ashore to collect samples. And I get to go with them.
I've been conditioned by the "helidunk" course to think that each time I get into a helicopter it will crash into the sea, so it comes as no surprise when I'm told to put on about five layers of warm clothing and then climb - boots and all - into a whole body rubber immersion suit.
They are known locally as "goon suits", and certainly leave me feeling like a "goon", with a similar range of movements to a stranded penguin. Add to that a helmet with earphones and goggles, place a radio microphone in the earpiece to record in-flight communications and I'm left almost unable to move, looking very silly in my personal rubber sauna bath.
Island-hopping
We wait, gently steaming, until, suddenly, our flight is called and we are whisked into the hangar.
Things happen with military precision here. Everyone knows their own role, be it refuelling the choppers or checking we have zipped our suits up correctly. Then they take us forward onto the helideck, almost by the scruff of the neck, and guide us under the spinning rotors to our seats.
Once pilot, observer and safety packs of camping gear are on board, there is only room for three passengers on the Lynx helicopter. So the first science team has gone ahead on a previous flight to find a landing site and begin sampling before we come and distract them. 
On the map, Trinity Island looks tiny, dwarfed by the mountains of the Peninsula. A good place to land perhaps? In reality it turns out to have sheer cliffs of rock and ice, with no obvious landing site.
So the scientists have opted for the interestingly named Spert Island nearby - scarcely a dot on the map, but still probably several kilometres across. We touch down on a flattish cliff top, covered in lichen-encrusted rocks.
We've very little time and the helicopter will wait with us. But there is just time to climb out of the rubber suits and breathe again! Then it's off on safari with British Antarctic Survey (Bas) scientist Pete Convey to see the biggest land animals on the continent.
Everyone thinks of marine creatures when considering Antarctica - whales, seals and penguins, or the skuas screaming at us from the air. But there are land creatures too.
They are springtails; plant-eating arthropods a millimetre or so long. Then there are the carnivores - the lions of this Antarctic micro jungle.
They're mites smaller than a full stop. Pete Convey is collecting them for identification to see how far south they range. There must be some point where it simply gets too cold for them to survive, even with their biological antifreeze.
Will we find that transition and could it be moving south as the Peninsula warms? All the climate models show this area as the hottest hotspot for warming on the planet with perhaps a 5C rise still to come this century.
The other little creature Pete Convey is searching out is the larvae of a tiny wingless midge. He freezes some of these to take home for genetic analysis. Comparisons with related species elsewhere in the world suggest that these Antarctic flies have survived in isolation on the continent for perhaps 45 million years.
All too soon it is time to don goon suits again and get back in the helicopter. Pilot Colin plays a little joke on us as we take off and pretends to let the craft fall off the edge of the cliff towards the icebergs.
But thankfully ditching at sea is not the norm that it seemed on the helidunk course and we're soon back on HMS Endurance for something rare in Antarctic exploration - a hot shower, good food and a cosy bed.
At last we're heading South.
I'm on board the Royal Navy icebreaker HMS Endurance, along with her crew and a team of scientists from the British Antarctic Survey.
With presenter and ice-enthusiast Gabrielle Walker we'll be making programmes for BBC World Service about one of the hottest topics of our age - climate change - in the region that's experiencing perhaps more change than anywhere else on the planet - the Antarctic Peninsula. 
Our trip has been months in the planning. Endurance is equipped with two Lynx helicopters that will enable the scientists - and, I hope, us - to reach places that would otherwise be inaccessible, though the weather can still change plans hour by hour.
While the researchers prioritise their objectives, we have all been having intensive safety training.
Prepare for the worst
Antarctica can be an unforgiving continent. In spite of the fears about global warming, temperatures can plunge far below zero degrees and survival time in the sea without an immersion suit is measured in minutes.
The nearest hospital is likely to be several days away, so the emphasis is always on prevention - but also on preparedness should the worst happen. 
The "helidunk" course Along with medicals and dental checks, we've had a full first aid course and a fieldwork course in Derbyshire, camping in the Pennine hills. Here we learnt ropework and abseiling and how to rescue each other from a crevasse. With a little imagination, we could conjure Antarctic snow and ice from the rain and millstone grit of the English Midlands.
But most feared and spectacular was the infamous "helidunk course". It takes place in a deep swimming pool at the Fleet Air Arm base in Wiltshire. Basically, you climb into a mock-up of a helicopter which is then dropped into the pools and sinks, upside down, in pitch darkness.
Trained up
You just have to get out alive through the windows. Actually, it's not as bad as it sounds. They don't simulate Antarctic temperatures, you get to practice in full light first, there are divers on hand if you get stuck, and no one spends more than about 15 seconds underwater. And since I hate opening my eyes underwater, the one in darkness was no worse than the others.
So here we are, as fully trained as I'm ever likely to be, sailing South from the Falklands, accompanied by storm petrels, black-browed albatross and the occasional dolphin,. across the notorious Drake Passage, capable of producing the roughest seas on the planet. 
Today, there's what a seasoned sailor would call "a reasonable swell" - waves of a few metres breaking over the bows. I love to watch them, though they have sent some scurrying, pale-faced, for bucket, bunk and pill.
After several days of running around, headless chicken-like, in the knowledge that those batteries, wires and waterproofs I forget to pack will certainly not be obtainable from a store down the road, here we are in a sort of limbo, getting to know the crew and waiting for the first iceberg on the southern horizon.
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