The seismic mapping ship, which is searching for signs of petroleum off the coast, slipped quietly back into Otago Harbour to refuel, and take on fresh supplies and crew members.
The vessel, owned by Norwegian-founded multinational company PGS (Petroleum Geo-Services) and contracted to Australian-listed oil company Origin Energy, departed just as quietly yesterday morning.
The ship will spend another month searching a 1150sq km area of sea floor 30km-50km east and northeast of Dunedin, at depths of up to 1100m, with the help of expensive 3D seismic scanning equipment.
Crew members had been expecting some "pretty awful" weather when the ship left Dunedin on January 2 to begin the search.
Yesterday, Origin geophysical operations manager Neil Millar, speaking from Australia, said the operation remained on schedule, despite some large ocean swells, which had caused some disruption to data being recorded by the ship's $13 million imaging equipment.
"We have had one or two days [when] we couldn't record," he said.
The weekend's provisioning trip also meant the vessel could avoid some "really bad" weather expected, as a storm passed through the vessel's search area.
"We are quite lucky it coincided with the refuelling, but the conditions just now are nothing the ship couldn't handle," he said.
Conditions had largely been favourable for the operation, however, and Mr Millar estimated the scanning was "about half-way finished" and remained on schedule.
"Everything is going quite well."
Other vessels have been warned to stay clear of Nordic Explorer during its search, as the vessel is towing six "streamers" of imaging equipment in a spread up to 600m wide and trailing up to 5.1km astern.
