first officer aboard the Green Wave which was sailing from Los Angeles to McMurdo Station, Antarctica. It was the second voyage in the year for 37-year-old American who is trying for his captain's licence. The following is the last part of his report on the voyage.

McMurdo Station, Antarctica. If you have never been there all sorts of romantic pictures come to mind about what the last frontier at the bottom of the world must look like. They will be wrong. The easiest comparison is that of a small mining town. The buildings are boxy rectangular affairs in various dusty shades of red, tan, green and brown. From our viewpoint on the ship approaching Winter Quarters Bay there doesn't appear to be any planned order.

Things seemed to get built as they were needed. I doubt if there is an architectural review board because it never would have passed the seven orange pre-fab structures we have down in the hold of the Green Wave .

Mostly the view is dominated by the surrounding snow, ice and bare rock. Fifty miles in the distance the 40,000 foot peaks of the Royal Societies have a clarity that is uncanny. It is easy to visualise this place as a sort of global promontory where you can look for answers in an atmosphere that is clear like no other in the world. It was researchers here who first discovered the growing hole in the ozone layer. Continuing research on the Ross Ice Shelf and outlying temporary camps yields important information in a variety of fields from global warming to cosmic rays. Supporting the scientists (nicknamed Beakers) is the job for the rest of us with knowledge and skills in construction, housing, meals, air and ground transport and, in my case, unloading and reloading a 500-foot freighter from a large ice cube.

The immediate task at hand for us on the Green Wave is to get tied up to the floating ice pier. During the past winter months when the bay froze over, US Navy Seabees, or construction workers, marked out a 200-by 600-foot rectangle and pumped seawater over the entire area. As the water froze a roadgrader would smooth things out and wire cables were laid to reinforce what would become a man-made iceberg. The process was repeated many times until a thickness of almost twenty feet was achieved. A large trenching machine was then used to dig 10 to 11 feet down around the perimeter to create a fracture line where accumulated ice from surrounding winter waters could break away in the spring. Cables keep the ice pier from drifting from the shore with the rest of the winter ice.

Last year the ice pier broke up during cargo operations forcing all cargo to come off at one hatch where the largest residual piece of ice was located.

This will be a brand new ice pier so it must be approached delicately. We don't want to hit it and cause its breakup.

As in our trip to Greenland last summer there are no tugs or pilots to help Capt. Peter Stalkus manoeuvre alongside the not entirely stationary ice pier.

The bow thruster works well, but the main engine, known to us as Mark, doesn't always co-operate in these exercises. It is common for me to have two men standing by the anchors "just in case'', and we ultimately end up with the bow less than 150 feet from the rocky shoreline with the ice pier on our port side when word comes that we are in position.

The captain had briefed me on what to expect with the mooring lines and their placement, but no one had bothered to do the same for the Navy longshoremen who were handling our lines down on the pier.

After a while we get things going fairly well and I am beginning to feel optimistic about finishing in time for breakfast. Shift change! All my recently trained line handlers leave and their untrained brethren wander across the bridge. Sometimes in past trips it has taken 12 to 18 hours for the tie up process, so I can't really complain about the four hours we took... so much for breakfast.

Once we hit the pier there is a sense of pressure from multiple directions to start unloading containers off the ship and moving them to staging areas to be stripped and reloaded. There has to be a sense of the big picture though. If all our lashings are just dropped on deck without stowing them, when the time comes to relash it will be an ugly mess. There is also the safety issue, so the Captain and I insist that an entire hatch has to be unlashed before a single container goes off. All crane drivers get a check-out ride with me before I'll turn them loose... What we're really trying to do is slow people down so they won't get hurt or killed. Prior to the Green wave fatalities were uncommon. Capt. Stalkus has had none in nine years.

The temperature hovers in the teens most of the time. If you have to stand out in the wind it will seem like 10 to 20 below zero (Fahrenheit). Everyone seems to have their own combination of gear they think works best. Neck gaiters to keep your throat from being exposed are fairly common. Some like the traditional balaclava that covers most of the face, but after awhile a disgusting frozen spot appears where you breath through. I gave that one a personal vote of no confidence. The heavy equipment operators favour rugged, insulated canvas coveralls while some management or office types like the expensive Patagonia gear. I had the canvas coveralls augmented with this terrific skiing shell from Patagonia, which confused a lot of people for awhile.

You can't escape the noise. The low-pitched whine of the winch drums and the roar of the ventilation fans on the cargo cranes only stop twice a day for lunch breaks and at 12-hour shift change. The hiss of air breaks and the throaty murmur of trucks named Aneeda, Brandi or Duck Unlimited idling on the ice pier mix with sounds of a forklift struggling in the hold and the sharp metallic ring of lashings being dropped. Voices shout down to those in the hold or up in the cranes or out on the pier. The work continues around the clock.

It is an intense period. Sleep is an hour here, two hours there until exhaustion demands a shower and at least four hours of rest. Any romantic notions of the last frontier are forgotten after 30 hours on deck. The locals say this is the best weather they have had all summer, a relative term at best. At least the cold keeps you awake.

It is also our job to take out the garbage and junk that piled up here during the past seasons. It is interesting to watch what comes over the ship's rail in the open "McMurdo Dumpsters''. Some are loaded full of scrap wire and one had a dozen electric drills sprinkled over scrap machinery parts. Many are full with two-foot cubes of crushed cans, scrap metal and anything else that would pass through the compactor that was flown in on a Hercules flight earlier this season.

Just about everything is segregated and ready to be recycled. Even the reefer containers that several days ago had been full of frozen food come back loaded with frozen food waste. "This is very expensive garbage,'' I think.

The bizarre is commonplace at the bottom of the world. I watch Sir Edmund Hillary's lovingly restored tractor swing aboard and land next to three shiny red helicopters. Beyond, I can see the Kiwis playing cricket with sticks and rocks on a makeshift pitch while the Captain rides his mountain bike up the hill to town. Home in Bermuda has no point of reference to this place.

After eight continuous days of cargo things start to blur together. The longshoremen have been conned into sweeping companionways and cleaning a lot of Antarctic dirt. We told them New Zealand agriculture officials would give us a hard time.

It is actually very quiet now with the cranes secured for sea. With a light snow falling and no wind it is quite picturesque.

Departure has been set for 1800, but two hours early we start getting ready by letting some of the mooring lines go. There is an undercurrent of urgency in the air. Wind and tide have conspired to push the pack ice that had been lurking offshore all week closer to the small bay we're in, threatening our hopeful escape. For nearly an hour we have been struggling with a mooring wire caught in the ice below the bow. Finally, admitting defeat, we cut it loose on deck with hydraulic shears.

My job is over. While we wait for some paper work to be brought out by a small boat a pod of killer whales comes close looking for prey along the edge of the pack ice. The real attraction of this place and for the work here is far from the romantic notions of those who dream of the challenge and intrigue of the ice. For some it is the challenge of a job that must be done no matter what conditions are encountered. Others are here simply because no one else is. As they fall astern of the ship, the small collection of buildings nestled under the rocky hills above Winter Quarters Bay provide a harsh and cold view of Antarctica. It will be a very hard addiction to explain to those who will only see the pictures.

HIGHLIGTED SECTIONS It is an intense period. Sleep is an hour here, two hours there until exhaustion demands a shower and at least four hours of rest. Any romantic notions of the last frontier are forgotten after 30 hours on deck. The locals say this is the best weather they have had all summer, a relative term at best. At least the cold keeps you awake.

The bizarre is commonplace at the bottom of the world. I watch Sir Edmund Hillary's lovingly restored tractor swing aboard and land next to three shiny red helicopters. Beyond, I can see the Kiwis playing cricket with sticks and rocks on a makeshift pitch while the Captain rides his mountain bike quickly up the hill to town. Home in Bermuda has no point of reference to this place.