My stint on Swan Hellenic's Minerva is just about to end, mainly due to other commitments and partly because the guys in head office were concerned that if I stayed on to Kirkwall and we hit bad weather, the ship would not be able to get in to the port.
Result? Minerva would head off to Norway - it's next stop after Scotland - with me on board when I was supposed to be elsewhere.
But they hadn't factored in Captain John Moulds. "I'd have got you in," he told me over dinner yesterday evening, after telling me that bad weather is no obstacle for him when it comes to landing passengers in Antarctica - the most unfriendly climate in the world.
Somehow I really think he would.
Jane Archer
