Repairs to the broken Basslink electrical and telecommunications cables that link Tasmania to the mainland have been delayed yet again, leading Basslink to push back the date for a return to service to “late June”.
The latest delay has been caused by bad weather, which has prevented cable repair vessel Ile de Ré from completing reconnection work.
Basslink said that it has lost more than 20 days of repair works due to bad weather since it completed the first of three joint repairs in the electrical cable. It now expects the two remaining joints to be fixed once the current bad weather clears.
“Once all the joints have been completed, it is anticipated that Basslink will return to full operations within a week,” the company said yesterday.
But chief executive Malcolm Eccles admitted the “late June” date might blow out further because of bad weather. “I’ll tell you now, we have no confidence at all because we have no control over the weather,” Eccles told the ABC.
