Heading Home!

0400 07 September 2012
R/V Aquila
55 45.512 N
164 49.411 W

We made it! We are officially done with the last mooring turnaround, and are currently steaming full speed towards Dutch Harbor, Alaska. I believe in the last post I mentioned how nice the weather was and it would be a matter of hours until we were done and headed home. However, it was not to be. Later that day, we started seeing reports of a pair of monster lows racing toward us. As we watched the systems develop, it quickly became clear we would not have time to make it to our last site before the first gale hit. After numorous team meetings and a great many calls to offices in Seattle, we made the decision to divert to St. Paul Island to wait out the worst of it. St. Paul offers the only available protection in that area, but protection is certainly a relative thing. We pulled into the harbor on the 3rd and got secured with our winter lines, monster four inch tie up lines strong enough to lift a whole stack of battle tanks with one line. Normally four lines keeps the boat snug aga
inst the dock, but in preparation for the coming breeze we doubled that to eight lines. All that and the surge still managed to break one of our older lines! Though most would've prefered to be heading home out of Dutch at that point, we all enjoyed our stay on the island. St. Paul is the number one breeding site for northern fur seals, and a major destination for birders across the world. The crew at the Trident Seafoods plant was kind enough to get us a permit to enter the seal rookery, so we were able to head up and snap some pictures of the adorable seal pups. We departed under blue skies and calm winds the evening of the 5th, heading out for the 200 mile run to the mooring site. Upon arrival, we sent the CTD over for the last time, retrieved one short mooring, deployed two, then headed in for dinner. After a delicious pasta dinner it was all hands on deck once again to retrieve the monster surface bouy we had all been waiting for. Everything seems worse in the planning stages and
deck meetings, but once we cut it loose from the anchor it was nothing more than another bouy retrieval and we had it aboard in short order.