This morning, the E/V Nautilus left our spot in the dock. We still don't have the part the ship needs for our science journey to begin, but another boat was scheduled to take our place in the port so we left there on schedule and are now anchored nearby. We still don't have a confirmed date for the cruise to begin in earnest, only estimates, but we will be anchored here for at least a few days. Unfortunately, this means I won't get to do any extra siteseeing in Guam, but there's still work we can do on board to get prepared and hopefully have a smooth(er) cruise later. I think we're all bummed not to be able to start the cruise on schedule and it's not ideal to be on the boat without much planned to do, but again we'll make the best of the situation. People have often told me that a big part of going to sea is learning to adapt to changing circumstances and working through the bumps in the road and I'm definitely seeing that to be true.
Annette and I did have a chance to hike Mount Lam Lam yesterday morning before settling onto the ship for good. I'm still sorting through my pictures of that to post here, but it was a really fun and beautiful hike! Yesterday we also did some safety and orientation briefings about the ship and started testing our equipment to make sure we can operate it here. We've got more tests to do on that today.
