May 10, two days before leaving the dock (D-2)

Today is loading day, it’s amazing how many shipping crates are being craned on board. The hard part isn’t the heavy lifting, it’s more about shoehorning five functioning lab groups into limited space. Hope everyone is friendly, sociable, and has had all their shots…







This will be our home for the next 3.5 weeks, the RV Thompson out of the University of Washington, in all her freshly-painted glory. Oh yeah, that would be the big white ship on the left.



I moved beyond the dock into a small waterfront park to get the Thompson in frame. While taking the photo, there came a strangely familiar hissing sound behind me, and I found I was interrupting a group play date…

The hissing came from the sentinel, guess I was too close.