The Last Desert: On the Boat Day 1

Well we boarded the ship yesterday evening. Thats where the good news ends. Relatively soon after getting into the cabins we were summoned to the bar area for our briefing. Unfortunately it turns out the ship has a hole in the front from breaking through ice on the previous trip. There´s really no other way to dress this up. If the can´t repair the hole which is below the water line then we may not get there at all & everyone is absolutely prepared for this to be the case. On the other hand it is possible that the repairs will be completed sometime during the night and that we may be able to leave tomorrow on a slightly reduced schedule.If this is the case then we may be asked to repeat the 24 hour/ 100 mile non stop stage that took place 2 years ago.Peoples reactions have ranged from depression, anxiety, anger to acceptance that these things are what they are & cannot be prevented. Mary, Alasdair and Zac have been fantastic at keeping us updated from the race management side of things and I have complete faith that if they cannot organise anything to accomodate us around this problem then there really is nothing else that can be done. The initial discussions of running on shore today to begin building the miles towards the 150 mark have dissipated 1. because Alasdair would need to go and mark the course, establish new checkpoints etc and with the onset of leaving constantly looming this may be a worthless exercise. 2. because no one on this trip came to run in South America, we have all done it before, we came to run in Antarctica & if we aren´t going to do that then frankly there is no point. I am optomistic, others are not. I would do the 6 day return journey for an hour on the ice. I only hope the Russians manging the ship see it that way as well.The silver lining to all of this is that Jan the Belgian Hero of a barman declared free bar at 6pm last night & allowed us to make our own drinks, play our own music and generally have a damn good time through the onset of disaster. Its fair to say that a different kind of endurance event was held & some excellent perfomances registered through the following 8 hours. Others didn´t fare so well and there was a substantial amount of mess created particularly when the dishwasher was opened by one racer and around 30 glasses fell out and smashed on the floor. Jan laughed and poured another drink. We love each other and now I love Jan. Its going to be a good trip from that side of things.Update tomorrow I hope from the middle of the Drake passage. We´ll see.