If the film crew wanted a picture of a sand storm today was the day for them to visit. After falling asleep on the floor of the hab last night relatively early and finally crawling into my bed and collapsing until about 09:00 hours this morning I felt remarkably refreshed for today. This morning I finished off some jewelry I was making, for family and some of the crew. I also had assignments to complete for my course back home, and with ensuring all my relevant paperwork was completed I felt ready for an EVA excursion. While Reece, Edwin and Heather went on an EVA the wind began picking up. After a while the external door of Airlock 1 was blown open again. After trying for half an hour to keep the door closed we were forced to tie the door to a ceiling beam to keep it from smashing through the side of the hab. I also had to resecure the sample hatch in the side of the hab where the wind had forced the door open despite being screwed shut.

When working outside the sand was being whipped up and it was all I could do to stand on my platform without being pushed over. I would have had serious concerns for the safety of the EVA but had full confidence in Reece's abilities as a leader.

By the time they returned I really felt I needed some physical exercise. So despite the weather Jamon and I went out on an EVA, with the intention of recovering some tools lost on a previous EVA and to track two paths which we had not traversed yet. With the wind and the light rain I felt revived by our ride. We traversed quite a difficult path and I could feel my adrenaline flowing. For someone as active as me the worse thing has been the lack of exercise that I have been able to take. Every day out of Sim I have gone for a run, and every evening I have completed an exercise program, but when trying to complete exercise in a room where five other people are trying to work it restricts your activity. So for me the chance to push myself was desperately needed.

I returned to the hab as I had entered it nearly a fortnight ago, and a good job to. The tension in the Hab reached a critical level as one of the crews behaviour became unacceptable. Both Reece and I spent the evening distracting other crew members to try and relieve some of the tension. This was not helped by the added workload given due to the crew having to submit their end of rotation reports on top of their normal reports. We also had visitors to the hab which meant that we were restrained further in our behaviour. With all this it meant that Reece was still compiling reports at 04:00 hours and three of us remained up with him to make sure he relaxed afterwards. This meant that four of the six crew went to bed at about 05:00 hours. With the generator having to be refilled at 05:30 hours due to the previous problems this meant that most of us were struggling at morning briefing.