21 May 2009 – Personnel exchange at Tongue Point

In the morning we docked at the Job Corp docks on the east side of Tongue Point. One of the crew on the New Horizon had attended school at Tongue Point, and with that connection we were able to secure permission to dock.This saved the project thousands of dollars, which is what it would have cost to dock at the Astoria city docks. Our hosts gave permission for our science crew to take a short walk around campus.

Our captain gave a tour of the New Horizon to several of he Job Corp teachers.After taking a group picture, Tawnya Peterson, Peter Kahn, Michelle Maier, Mariya Smit and Jarred Swalwell disembarked. Then, Joe Needoba and Florian Moeller came on board and we left the dock at 1300.We immediately headed for the mouth of the estuary, and crossed over the bar at about 1600 during slack tide.

The weather was pretty rough that evening but we pressed on, conducting CTD casts every hour at pre-selected locations in the plume as part of our Plume Feature Tracking exercise. Initially, the captain noted that several of these locations were too close to the shore for comfort, so I requested replacements via email and Nate Hyde and Nirzwan Bandolin sent them moments before we lost our internet connection (Nate also read them to me on my cell phone voice mail).