Thursday 11 August 2016, week 13: Buldir Island, 20:15

“Should we have halibut or cod for dinner?”

Those words from McKenzie indicated Christmas had arrived for us Buldirians. On Tuesday the Tiglax returned to the remote waters of the western Aleutians for our resupply: our one day to receive packages, wash and dry laundry in machines, and shower with a normal water supply.

While the weather has been rather unBuldir-like all season, providing us with a few sunburns, little rain, and lower winds than are typical, our resupply just happened to line up with the first storm of autumn. Tuesday’s forecast was for SW30 knot winds with rain and seas of 12-13 feet. To put that in perspective, much of our season has given us 10-15 knot winds and seas of 4-6 feet.

We heard the rain overnight and knew it would be a wet day. Having been told the ship would be ready for us after first light, we awoke at 6:30 to finish packing up our trash, recycling, empty propane and kerosene jugs, auklet diet samples, and murre eggs.

By 7:20 it was light enough for a walk to the beach to survey the conditions to see if a skiff landing would be possible. Although I got a “way to delegate!” from the current ship’s skipper over the handheld radio, I just happened to not be one of the pair who donned raingear to check things out. If the conditions had been unfavorable, we could have been stuck on land or needing to hike to an alternate landing. Fortunately, God placed the storm on our side. We had a slight northerly swell, but the winds were from the south.

Without too much of a hassle, John was able to land the skiff to retrieve us from our island home and deliver us wet, but happy, to the ship. For the first time in months, we had real eggs for breakfast! The laundry facilities, longer showers, and meals (crunchy salad!) were nice, but I think we all most enjoyed returning to the ship and its crew. The Tiglax had made a run west from Adak with the pure purpose of our resupply; no other scientists were on board, and the ship was going to turn around and travel the ~30 hours straight back to Adak.

As Kevin put it in our thank you e-mail, having the ship and crew to ourselves was a special treat. It was “almost like stopping by a friend’s house for a visit, except that our friends brought their house by for a visit.” We were able to hear how their season of seafaring has been and get filled in with only as much news as we wanted. The crew kept asking if there was anything else we wanted, and we were made to feel at home. It was all we could have asked for.

By early afternoon we were in transit back to the wilds of our beach, where the swell had picked up and become more exciting. During the offload of cardboard boxes of produce, mail, a dutch oven, and 50 lb. of nails we did end up with a drybag in the surf and a ¼ skiff-load of water, but everything and everyone made it. After a few doughnuts in the skiff to drain water, John was headed back to the dry warmth of the Tiglax.

McKenzie, Kevin, and I were left carrying everything up the cobble beach and down our path to the cabin. The surf had washed our faces and hair with saltwater, but we were in good spirits. The cabin was soon a mess of wet bags and boxes that we shortly opened to find camp supplies, beer, work gloves, magazines, chocolate, new socks, watermelon, apples, sweet potatoes, happy carrots and potatoes, pickled fiddleheads from our friends on Chowiet, and the most important item of all: a new Michigan State hat to replace the one that went up in flames this winter. It was a merry Christmas indeed.