A very early start

Day five

The alarm definitely came in use with an early morning start of 3am today.  First things first, I take water samples from the CTD while Fiona does salinity samples. Then we prepare the CTD for its next trip down under.


CTD instrument

Sampling is undertaken at what’s known as ‘CTD stations’ which the Tangaroa travels to. We’re advised that the next CTD station is about 2 hours away, meaning an approximate arrival time of 8:00 hours.

So we have some time to ourselves (translation: I can have breakfast and catch up on sleep!). However the weather has turned really foul. I’m told it’s not looking good for sampling for the rest of the day. Apparently getting the instrumentation into the water is going to be ok, but retrieving it could be hazardous. The decision is made for us to wait out the foul weather.

I take a quick trip to the bridge and have a chat with the crew. At around 11:00 we are about 20 miles out from Jackson Head just waiting out the “weather gods” to pull through.

Welcome to the West Coast…

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