Captain Dave Murline of the R/V Revelle keeps eyes out for a mooring rising to the surface. Photo: Thomas Moore

Down here in the “roaring forties” Tasmanians have a saying for their typical weather patterns, “four seasons in one day”.  It can be sunny and calm one moment and blowing a gale the next.  After the R/V Revelle’s first few days of relatively calm weather we have what looks to be multiple cold fronts on the way, along with the roaring westerlies they can bring.

Luckily the TTIDE team and the R/V Revelle have been working like a well oiled precision timepiece and we are on schedule, the back deck currently abuzz with winches and gloves hauling in our seventh mooring for this the third and final TTIDE leg.  Our promptness has also been a blessing as it has put us at our series of northern shelf moorings, up in shallower water near the coast of Tasmania and somewhat in the lee of the gale gusting to 45 knots.  

In the lee of Tasmania the roaring forties have less “fetch” – the distance travelled by wind across open water – saving the TTIDE mooring recovery crew from having to perform their often tricky and sometimes dangerous work on a deck pitching and heaving in mountainous swells. 

A 48″ orange ball of syntactic foam – the top of mooring T3 – floats at a distance in a wind-blown Tasman Sea. Photo: Thomas Moore

Mooring “T3” is coming in across the blocks as this post it being typed and with luck and skill the TTIDE team will wrestle back from the bottom four entire moorings today.  A challenging feat – wish us well.

– Thomas Moore, for the TTIDE team