The light in the Falklands is spectacular. At the same latitude south as London is north, the light is completely different from that of southeast England. I have no idea why this should be, but it is so! I awoke at about 4.45 a.m., peered out through the curtains at a stunning cerulean sky and golden hilltops around the bay; it was not a hard decision to throw on some clothes, grab the camera, and go up on deck.

The storm was completely gone although a 20-knot wind was to stay with us all day. The sea had calmed enough for the bunkering barge to come alongside some time after midnight, and re-fuelling was going on (I learned later that there were big savings to be had by filling up the tanks for the whole voyage in the Falklands rather than in Ushuaia).

It was refreshingly cold, the sun already well above the horizon in a cloudless sky, whitecaps sparkling on the dark blue surface of the sea, and the iridescent red bunkering vessel providing a vivid contrast to the blues, whites and greens of the Minerva and her surroundings.

After breakfast we made our way into Stanley Harbour and the Captain did a fine job of parallel-parking Minerva between two ships on the floating dock.

In the afternoon we went into Stanley for a wander around the neat, colourful small town of about 2,000 with its pub, churches, civic buildings and four terraced townhouses that could have been transported brick by brick from Victorian England – apart from the green corrugated roof rather than tiles. The morning cloud had blown away and it was a beautiful sunny afternoon.

We were told there had been a fair bit of damage in yesterday’s storm but we saw not a sign of this – frankly it was a tribute to the quality of construction that half the homes weren’t completely flattened. I suspect that the buildings here are pretty well put together given that a fresh wind apparently blows most days of the year– you could see, for example, that the rivets holding down the ubiquitous corrugated roofs were spaced conservatively every few centimetres. Our morning guide, however, aged about sixty and born and bred in Stanley, said she had never before experienced winds like it in the town. Which set Sunday’s storm very clearly in perspective.