The drop in temperature does bring it’s advantages, and we have been joined by ever increasing numbers of Albatross, assorted petrels and our first large whale – a rather curious Sei who joined us for a few hours. But with changes in temperature we have seen some rather severe weather over the last few days.
Albatross
On Friday we had to cancel both of our routine sampling stations due to winds up to 35 knots, and as I write we have a fairly fast moving depression passing over us that saw gusts of wind up to 50 knots during the night put pay to the last 8 hours of our 3rd and final 30 hour diel sampling station.
Weather image provided by www.passageweather.com
Unfortunately this strong wind and heavy seas meant that we parted company with our drifter buoy, which was marking the position of our sampling exercise. The buoy and its drogue had served us proud during their three deployments but this time were lost to the South Atlantic – sorry Ricci.
Peoples focus and attention alter much during a cruise of this length largely as a result of changing levels of tiredness but also due to changing priorities, with a week to go most are now turning their attention to getting home, but we still have a lot to do. If the weather allows we should have another 3 days of sampling, there are frozen samples to be consolidated into shipping boxes for transport home, cruise reports to write, boxes to pack and hopefully, we’ll be able to fit a party in to thank all of the ships crew who have looked after us so fantastically.
Deck crew: from left – Glen (Tiny), Mick, Mark, Dave, Paul, Andy, Lee