The Long Journey Home

 

5 weeks at sea. 8,000 nautical miles. Antarctica to Portsmouth.

 

There was a rush to get on the ship. I’d been half ready to leave for a few days. The plans had changed and changed again, all plans hampered by the wind which had picked up and was blowing large bergs into south cove. South station is where the wharf is located, and where the ship was moored. While the ship was moored it was at the mercy of these icebergs and being unable to manoeuvre it was in fact hit by one. But if the ship cast off it would have great difficulty getting back in again. So, what had been planned for the following morning now suddenly became the evening before. We had 15 minutes to get ourselves and all our bags on board. This was not how I had envisaged leaving station having spent the last two and a half months there. I’d been asleep, having a really long afternoon nap, when my roommate came in and told me that it was time for us to leave. It was one of those tired, deep sleeps that can take hours to wake up from, and I was stumbling around trying to get my last bits of kit together – still slightly confused as to what was going on. A few minutes later we were making our way down to south station, not really much of a walk at all, but in the growing darkness and with a bitter wind blowing snow and ice into your pores it felt like quite the expedition. The lights from the ship not so much guided but blinded us, but there it was, and we were welcomed onboard to what would be our home for the next five weeks, for the slow journey home. I remember saying hurried goodbyes to the winter team of 23 who would be staying behind. I remember seeing my friend Katy trying to get enough shelter from the wind to smoke a cigarette – the tiny, bright embers adding a fleeting warmth to the world. It’s a strange place for goodbyes, maybe easier somehow because they are so clear cut for a time. As things turned out, despite the rush, we didn’t actually cast off until the following morning – but at least we had the option if required. In the end it was even slightly delayed – divers were sent down to check what if any damage had been caused to the hull from where the iceberg hit. You don’t want to be heading out to sea, into the Drake Passage least of all if the ship is anything less than sound. Thankfully, it was all ok. I was very much ready to go home even if it was going to take a long time to get there. The first few days were rough, I spent hours curled up on the toilet floor throwing my guts up, hoping for even the briefest moment of relief. We were two days delayed in getting to the Falkland Islands (our first stop to refuel). The weather in the Drake Passage was so bad, the sea state showing ten metre swells, that we took shelter behind the South Shetland Islands for a couple of nights. The sea sickness pills kicked in, think I might have even overdone them, they make you drowsy and I just seemed to be sleeping all the time after that. And in sleep on the ship I would be visited by the most vivid of dreams. I dreamt that I was hurtling around the streets of Seascale in a tractor – in a mad rush to find a dentist so that I could get my covid vaccination. Another time, I was walking around the deck and got thrown overboard as the ship flipped 90° in order to give the starboard side a clean. I was adrift in the water but out of nowhere appeared Foxfield train station, Cumbria. I was able to drag myself up onto the platform from where I radioed the captain of the ship and they turned around to pick me up. The dreams and the sleep made a pleasant change from constantly feeling sick. The first week on board, the first ten days I’d say, were pretty tough at times mentally and physically. I went through periods where I felt utterly alone, and all I could seem to do was sit in my cabin and cry. I rarely cry, and certainly not like that, so I was left to wonder what was going on. Perhaps it was simply the realisation that on this journey there would be no get out, I would have no choice but to go through whatever I was going through. It’s pretty scary to face up to things and to have no option of running away. As it turns out it was all ok and I was ok. Maybe it’s that old saying that the fear of something is worse than the thing itself. I don’t know if that was true in this case, I don’t know if that was what was going on. Maybe we just need to retreat into the shadows from time to time. It’s funny in that respect, the only place we can find to exist when we feel as if there is nowhere in the world that we could possibly be. The feeling of being alone, though – well I think that may always come and go. But, after many days and nights at sea, after so much time that you reasonably come to assume that the world must be made up entirely of ocean and sky, I thought perhaps that it might just be enough that each morning I wake up and that each night I go to sleep that it’s the same endless sky above my head and the same earth somewhere far below my feet as one elsewhere in the world whom I love. It’s not much to hold onto, but what else is there in a world where it’s hard to know what’s real anymore. The longer I spent at sea the less time meant anything to me. I once asked what day it was, and although they said it was Sunday, they could have said any day, they could have even said a made-up word and it would have all been the same to me. There was really nothing I had to think about at all, and often I didn’t. I think I would have given in entirely to just watching an endless amount of mindless TV dramas if it wasn’t for deciding to run/walk a virtual West Highland Way around the deck. This was followed up by a virtual Great Glen Way. The laps of the deck numbered over a thousand by the end of the voyage. But it was something to do. Even just the aspect of counting kept me occupied. And it gave me a sense of movement when the world around me seemed so unchanging. Being outside helped with the seasickness, too.

 

I knew though, that when it was all said and done, there would be something about the ocean that I would miss. And the thing about it which I would miss would be the thing about it which I didn’t understand – which I don’t even think I could try to explain. Perhaps it’s the sheer enormity of it – ocean for as far as you could see, and even if you could see further, it would look no different anyway. And then there was the world beneath you, the world below the surface of the water. A world that we floating above it could neither see nor know nothing about. Occasionally a creature would rise from the depths, a flying fish appearing on the crest of a wave, zooming above the sea for a seemingly impossible amount of time before disappearing once more into the endless blue. Other times we would glimpse a distant whale, and we were welcomed by a pod of dolphins into the English Chanel. These sightings from the world below only added to the mystery of that place and the mystery of the journey as a whole. In a day and age which seems increasingly high speed and instantaneous, where there are so few places on the planet which you couldn’t reach within a day, it made this voyage seem impossibly long. It was a wonderful reminder of just how vast this planet is, of how much there is to treasure and protect. It’s a sense of scale so hard to appreciate unless you’re in the middle of it. I don’t think five weeks of my life have ever been played out in such distinct and stunning isolation. I wouldn’t wish to be at sea for another day, but I wouldn’t wish to take even a single day away from it. It truly was a journey of a lifetime – for all this and for all the people I was lucky enough to share it with.