Salvage crews are optimistic that fine weather in Bay of Plenty today will allow them to resume pumping oil off the stricken cargo ship Rena.
Salvors have been in a holding pattern since Monday as the ship was battered by swells of up to five metres and strong winds.
Maritime New Zealand said in a statement a team of three salvors planned to reboard the vessel this morning to carry out a safety assessment before more salvors could board and begin reconnecting oil transfer equipment.
An observational flight set out this morning to assess the vessel's condition.
National on scene commander Ian Niblock said there had been no new reports of more oil coming ashore overnight, but teams of responders were well prepared should more wash up.
More container debris was expected to arrive on land over the coming days.
Spokesman for the salvage company Svitzer said the weather appeared calm and still.
"But as we keep saying, even in calm conditions that ship is still in a very, very fickle condition. What is interesting, though, is she has withstood bad weather for the past 48 hours when we had swells of up to five metres. Today we've got average swells of about two metres peaking at three metres and a 10 knot wind.
"There are many, many technical things that have to line up here, even on a calmer day when weather is not causing havoc there are still things that can go wrong. Just one thing that doesn't match up can cause a delay for several hours or even a day or longer so it is still a very difficult and technical and complicated task.''
The priority this morning would be to reconnect the fuel transfer hose from the bunker barge Awanuia to the ship's fuel tanks.
Booster pumps were in place which would hopefully speed up the process.
A crane vessel was on standby to remove containers from the ship, but it was too risky to do this while oil was being extracted.
