Tom Coad - Day 2 We have altered our course to south as we prepare to cross Bass Straight. With fierce weather slowing our progress and jeopardising us making it home on schedule, there was only one stop made today amidst a cold core eddy. Voyagers are making the most of transit time, spending the day analysing some CTD and underway plankton samples under the light microscopes on board. Some of these samples included an interesting fluorescence anomaly at 75m yielding large numbers of Dinoflagellate Ceratium sp. Operations that have gone ahead despite travelling delays are running smoothly with the CPR still happily underway. CTD and XBT deployments are going ahead, providing important information in allwoing us to accurately determine the drop rate of the XBTs. Most of us have found our sea legs and are taking advantage of the outstanding cuisine produced daily in the galley, definitely a major perk that comes with working at sea. We also celebrated our chief scientist Zanna Chase's birthday with sticky date. Currently our hopes are to pick up speed, allowing us to gather enough slack time to sample a number of stations en route to and off of Maria Island.