We've now had a week on the south coast and there's a different feeling to the island - and to our endeavours.
We're more exposed to harsher weather and there are fewer sheltered anchorages, so we're having to be more adaptable in our plans. We've made some good landings and covered a lot of ground but we've also missed out on some good spots for giant petrels because the sea has been too rough to get ashore.
From Annenkov Island we enjoyed the most amazing views of South Georgia's south side: an endless vista of snow covered rocky mountain peaks, from the west right down to the east, horizon-spanning, brilliant under the sub-Antarctic sun, with the cloud in constant change, from wisps skimpily wreathing the highest tops to thick blankets pulled right down to the sea.
Annenkov is really special: a large island free from rats, with giant petrels and wandering albatrosses, pipits and pintails. We spent the day doing transect work for white-chinned petrels, monitoring nest burrows, vegetation and topography at 20 pace intervals in dead straight lines from coast to coast to help develop a method to assess the overall population from sample surveys.
After work, we lay on the tussac cliffs watching light-mantled sooty albatrosses lift and swoop on the evening breeze, against the backdrop of South Georgia's mountain chain.
We pondered the future of places like Annenkov. Is there really any need for people to visit here? Is scientific work justified against the danger of introducing rats or other damage to this fragile place?
Or is Annenkov Island one of those rare places, effectively as yet untouched by humans, that should remain so and placed out of bounds to scientists, explorers and other visitors alike, a piece of pristine planet left alone to continue thus?
The land of the south coast feels different to South Georgia's northern side. It isn't as indented by bays and inlets and there's a bit more land between the mountains and the sea.
Back on the trail of giant petrels, I enjoyed a walk among low hills and gentle rocky slopes with lakes in the hollows, dramatically echoing with the thunder and roar of a calving glacier just across the narrow bay beyond my headland. Last night's anchorage at Wilson Harbour featured a vast, scooped, glacial river valley pushing back into the mountains. And people have never tried to settle here.
There's the occasional evidence of a sealer's hut but it really seems like the south side is nature utterly raw, just as has been for epochs of time, unsullied by the advent of man. Let it continue to be so.