3 December
The day starts early on Nimrod… some people are early risers and can’t sleep past 4:30! And the crew are on watch so there are always conversations going on. Generally by 5:30 or 6:00 there are people having coffee and a continental breakfast. We have decided that we really don’t need a full cooked breakfast every day. Plus it is more efficient to get people out in the water earlier if we only have a cold breakfast. The daily briefing is at 7:30 and we like to get the boats away by 8:30. Generally we get back to Nimrod by 11:30 for a 12:30 lunch, a 1:30 briefing on the afternoon work and boats away again at 2:00. The afternoon work ends about 4:30-5:00. The cook seems to always have something ready for the cold and wet divers. Most people spend an hour or more before dinner writing up notes, downloading GPS co-ordinates or trying to fix unresponsive electronics! We are having a few problems with our magnetometer.
Once again we had a magnificent dinner with a choice of fish or meat, pasta and salad. After dinner was the nightly debrief and then a presentation by one of the Flinders University students on his Master’s degree research. We also showed a DVD of the Mermaid Project from January this year. The Mermaid Blog is still archived on the ANMM website, if you’re interested!
4 December
Yesterday was very rough, with a strong current… maybe 2-2 .5 knots. It was calmer and less current today, but the water felt colder! We had two boats of snorkelers out both morning and afternoon for about 2.5 hours morning and afternoon. In total we covered 5 kilometres of swim line searches between us. We are pushing our record on Mermaid of 11 kilometres in 5 days! Sorry Alice and Megan, but it looks it set to fall on this one!! But we are running two boats, so you’re still in with a chance. We’ll cut our total in half, just so it’s fair…
Well, it’s almost time for dinner, so this is going to be short. But we have also been collecting biographies of the expedition team, so those should go up with this posting. We will have some mug shot of the crew as well! Maybe not all at once, but watch this page….
See you tomorrow!
Paul
Contributed by Paul Hundley, Curator – Australian National Maritime Museum