The day has been pleasant, calm seas, beautiful scenery, aurora, wildlife, cooking and housework. It was the best day of the expedition. By far.

Ben, crew, whole expedition 27 Sept 22.30 UTC 

Today was a perfect, and I mean perfect, day.  I was woken up at half three in the morning in time for my watch which, while cold, was clear with a decent view of the northern lights and a clear, bright crescent moon.   My downtime in-between involved jumping whales, a beautiful sunrise, warm day and the invention of the tuna-mayo-chutney sandwich.

During today we rounded “Cape Desolation”.  It’s very well named.  Huge dramatic red-brown stone cliffs without any kind of ground water, vegetation or animal life.  It is completely desolate. Nothing lives.  It was therefore, in a slightly scary way, beautiful.  I completely loved it.  The climbing you could do.

A couple of hours after my watch I was called up to witness white whales jumping out of the water and crashing back down in a huge splash.  I’ve never seen anything like that before.  Something that heavy managing to push itself eight feet out of the water on a tail.  Astonishing.  Today the job of housework fell to me and Rob.  We bustled around the saloon with hoover and cloth and made it all look clean and shiny.  This effect lasted about ten minutes, when I started making lunch.

I was doing food today so for lunch I just did sandwiches.  Tuna, mayonnaise and cucumber, a tried and trusted combination.  So for mine I decided to add gherkins, olives and apple chutney.  Shockingly it was exquisite.  I highly recommend it, oh, there were capers in the tuna-mayo as well.  Very nice. Honestly. Dinner was my job as well so I copied a meal first cooked during the North East Passage.  I got three ham steaks that I roasted with a honey and mustard glaze while boiling potatoes David had peeled for me and then mashing them with a sizeable  wedge of butter. The result was very well received.  I was very happy.  I’ll be doing those again.  Just after dinner I went up into the cockpit and noticed that we had the best aurora I’ve ever seen.  It was astonishing.  We all got up into the cockpit and saw the most epic display of charged particles colliding with the ionosphere that anyone could possibly hope to see.  The day has been pleasant, calm seas, beautiful scenery, aurora, wildlife, cooking and housework.  It was the best day of the expedition.  By far.