Docked in Tuk, departure planned for shortly after 2pm

We arrived as planned in Tuk harbour in the early morning. It was the non-motion that woke me up. After breakfast, I went up to the coast guard warehouse where I was told there was a landline. Yahhh! I actually got to have a long conversation with my sweetie, and also tried calling Soph & Jim - but no answer. Wish my calling card hadn't run out, would love to have talked to so many of you - know I was thinking of you.

Being a holiday, the only store in town was closed, but the owner opened it for us. Town is about 5km from the dock, so a few truck loads of us went into town. I bought some dried fruit and gum that I'd been craving. We all then went to the RCMP station - the only place in town to buy clothing with the name Tuk...... on it. From there, Quinn, Ryan and I decided we would walk back to the ship. We walked for a good 2 hours, they were happy to take the extremely long walk back so I could take photos: sheds with roofs covered in antlers (the largest antler rank is mounted on the side of the house) broken down snowmobiles, kids on bikes, boarded up houses still lived in, furs airing over deck rails, Richardson’s ground squirrels, dogs tied on short leashes in front of every house, and I got some good pictures of a kennel full of huskies - must be a team, there were 8 nice looking white huskies.

It was great to walk on solid land, however a few times I looked toward the horizon and swore it was still bobbing up and down. After lunch on the boat, I snuck in a half hour jog on the gravel road into town. Around 2 we had a science meeting to met the new members of the team and discuss our work plan for the next few days. It was around then that I realized the silence I had been quite enjoying had escaped again as they fired up the engines and we were steaming out of the harbour once more. The box core team will sample some mud after supper, but no fishing today. First thing tomorrow we have another monitoring station to complete, and then it will be on to the whale feeding area to sample what they are munching on.

On with the whale hunt. Cat.