Yatchpath has pushed the load date back yet again. The new date is June 23^rd. After about a week of trying to resolve the issue with numerous emails, calls, text messages, I heard back from the head of the company. They have 15 or 16 boats (4 to 6 in Victoria alone) that need to get to the east coast, and they are working as hard as they can to accommodate everyone. They estimate our probability of getting on this shipment as about 60%. Amazingly, the ship is the Ocean Titan!

We are now within two days of the “line drawn in the sand”– the last possible day we can load and still get the R/V David Folger up to Lake Champlain in time to get ready for classes (including Alumni College). These delays have already cost the College a tremendous amount of prescheduled research and personnel time. Many of the research programs have had to be postponed for a full year, and the time available for others has had to be severely restricted: one program has been cut from 12 days to three and most likely will have to be postponed for another year.

The transport company has just informed us that they are delaying our load date again. Now it is scheduled for June 19^th or 20^th. If we don’t get loaded soon, we won’t get the vessel here in time for fall classes, and this is starting to be a real concern. If we do load on the 20^th, then we will most likely have the R/V David Folger here around August 1^st, which will give us just enough time to get the boat ready for the fall classes. We are currently trying to come up with alternative options.