Yatchpath has pushed the load date back yet again. The new date is June 23rd. 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.