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We are back at work after yesterday’s excitement, although we continue to wrestle with some of the problems that often crop up at the start of a voyage. The winches are now working well. At the bottom of the next cast, CTD 12, we noticed that the wire was not spooling properly onto the winch drum. The wire used for the CTD is a special type designed just for this purpose. There is a conducting cable in the middle, which allows us to communicate with the instrument, surrounded by two layers of wire. The two layers are wrapped in opposite directions to prevent the wire from twisting. To spool out more than 4 km of thin (6 mm diameter) wire and reel it smoothly back in again requires that the set-up of the spooling gear is spot on. We returned north to a very deep (>4700 m) station we had skipped earlier so we could spool out as much wire as possible and re-adjust the spooling gear. Keith and his team did a great job and we are now back in action, with a beautifully smooth looking drum of CTD wire.
REGARDS: Steve, Fred and Penny
Map
A map showing Australia and Antarctica. The map shows the journey of one voyage that has occured in the season, with each route highlighted in a distinct colour.