"I'M NOT at all looking forward to our spell in Tom Crean. I can see it being continuously wet, miserable and sick making ... it will be great to get it over."
This demon dread can be an exhausting business. Fortunately, just one week after this entry in his skipper's log, Paddy Barry doesn't have to be apprehensive any longer. In the words of Ernest Shackleton, whose Antarctic rescue route he is now retracing, it's a case of a grin and bear it, growl and go".
Grinning, growling, retching or howling, Barry and four crew on the South Aris Irish Antarctic Adventure have reached Elephant Island and are bound at long last on an 800 mile passage to South Georgia.
After a mash potato dinner on Elephant's aptly named Point Wild on Saturday night - so exposed that it is little more than a chinstrap penguin rookery - Barry, co skipper Frank Nugent, Mike Barry, Jarlath Cunnane and Jamie Young set sail in their 23 foot wooden lifeboat, Tom Crean.
In the first 14 hours, they were reporting three knots, borne along by moderate westerly winds.
The Elephant Island landing had been accomplished earlier that day in relatively tranquil seas. It would have been impossible if there had been any sort of swell, the expedition's manager, John Bourke, told me on High Frequency (HF) radio.
"How Shackleton got three lifeboats originally in here we don't know," he said. "As far living here ..." some 22 members of the Kildare man's British Transantarctic Expedition of 1914-17 survived a winter there in two upturned craft.
Shadowing the Tom Crean, within 10 miles is the 54 foot rescue yacht, Pelagic, whose helmsman, US yachtsman Skip Novak, had played referee ashore between the Irish and some less than welcoming fur seals. There had been a moment of potential confrontation, but no tussles over territory.
One bite from these guys, and the expedition is over, Novak had warned, talking to the two legged oilskin clad mammals in his charge.
That's the good news. Less promising last night was the Chilean navy weatherfax which indicated yet another area of intense low pressure moving rapidly east. "Not great," Novak commented simply to The Irish Times on HF.
"The wind will go north, and if it shifts north east we may "have to heave to for a while again."
Still, the departure from Elephant Island was "dry", John Bourke noted optimistically. When Shackleton and his five crew launched their 23 foot lifeboat on April 24th, 1916, they also made almost three knots. However, as navigator Frank Worsley recorded, a plugged leak in the hull was followed by a heeling gunwale shipping freezing seas.
Everything was soaked, including their reindeer skin sleeping bags, and they soon resembled a "shivering mass of humanity", he said.
The following morning, Kerryman Tom Crean, who became known as the High Priest of Cokkery and Tender of the Sacred Flame, lit the Primus stove and cooked up hot "hoosh".
Their rations: a biscuit, four lumps of sugar, and a fag made from plug tobacco rolled in tissue. As seas broke, dribbles ran down necks and backs. The trick was "to sit as still as possible, Worsley wrote, and let body heat warm wet clothes. "We knew it was cold, but we did not carry a thermometer - lit would have made us colder," he said.
Musto sailing gear, thermals, waterproof sleeping bags and a bilge pump will make life a bit more bearable 81 years later. There is constant daylight. In contrast to, Shackleton's journey, this is being made in the Antarctic summer. Kerryman Mike Barry - a restaurateur - may be ordained High Priest of Cookery and Sacred Flame Tender on their one ring stove. Yet this passage is no Mediterranean cruise.
For Worsley, the Southern Ocean was capable of whipping up the "highest, broadest and longest swells in the world", measuring up to 50 feet at times from crest to hollow. On such "blue water hills", fast clippers could be "tossed" on "foaming, snowy brows" and "battered by ponderous feet", he judged, while the biggest ocean liners were no more than "playthings" for the "real leviathans of the deep".
More modest surf was what this reporter experienced at the weekend, this time in a canvas sea kayak, while still monitoring the Irish expedition from the Antarctic Peninsula. The kayak, which is owned by the philosopher and cook on the Russian ship, Professor Molchanov, is a whale chaser. No whales this time, I'm afraid, but a persistent flock of orange billed Gentoo penguins.
Leaping porpoise like through the clear water, they darted about the bow and stern and tried to nip the paddle blades as my fingers began to freeze to its plastic shaft. Nothing would shake them off. Did I look like giant krill? The bosun on deck thought he bad the answer. An Irish red nose poking out from a balaclava may have resembled a friendly orange beak.
