Tiphanie eventually got away today to collect her fish samples from a river out at Goose Green. The fish will not be killed but stunned by electric current. She will then measure, weight and take a small scale sample and return them to the river. She has to do this at several different sites along the river. Each site has to be GPS marked. I believe they then run a net across the top and bottom of each site to retain any fish in the area. A count of fish is then also made at each site. Everything had to be put off at the last minute last week. Tiphanie got out of bed ready to go, stretched and pulled a muscle in her neck. It was very painful and for a while she could barely lift her head. This resulted in her not being allowed to go for three days by which time it was the weekend.
Tanya flew in today. She brought a two week old lamb with her. The lamb is one of a twin. One of the draw backs of our new breed of sheep that we are putting across Speedwell is their ability to get in lamb at any time of year, hence we have 3 lambs born mid winter. The ewes are pure Samm and had been put aside to be artificially inseminated with Samm semen. Too late. When the vet went to put the semen in she could tell that 5 of the ewes were already in lamb. This is not too big a problem because they have been caught by pure Samm rams but it is not ideal as there is not a lot of feed around. We are very lucky that we are having an extremely mild winter. The decision was taken yesterday to remove one of the twins because it was starting to fall away and by doing this it will give the other twin a much better chance to grow. We still have two ewes left to lamb, hopefully they will hold of for the ten days that Christopher is in Stanley.
Steven and Chris went out to Flores harbour today to meet Christopher and Shaun ready to bring Theo to Stanley. They plan to leave at about 8 tonight and with a good run will get into Stanley at about 10 tomorrow morning. The idea is to leave at night so that they approach Wolf rocks in the day light. If they get to them in daylight they will come between if it is dark they will go out around. Christopher says they are quite intimidating as you see them rising up towards you ,on the radar I assume. They will be out of contact for about seven hours but will be able to pick up a mobile signal when they pass Lively Island. They also have a satellite phone for emergencies. Hopefully they will not have any problems. He has a good crew, himself, very good with all the equipment and a dab hand at mechanics. Chris Poole who has done a lot of small boat work in the past and is also a mechanic, Chris' father who is also a mechanic and Shaun who is doing his first long trip. Shaun is good on the equipment but doesn't have much in the mechanicing skills yet. He can handle the boat well but you are more likely to get a rougher trip with him at the helm. He is quite happy to keep her pounding or rolling where as Christopher learnt long ago that if I'm on board he should keep it as smooth as possible because there is always the chance I might want to turn round and go back.
Lastly looking forward to the boat getting in because Christopher is bringing the skype phone in and I will be able to give my mum a ring and have a nice long chat.
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