We are heading out the west end of the Strait of Magellan again after completing the sad duty of delivering the body of Captain Phil Smith in Punta Arenas. Captain Smith died early on Tuesday morning, 19 January 2010. Our return was slowed by strong winds on the way back to the coast of Chile, and then we were required to stand off from the dock for 10 hours due to 50 knot winds coming off the town of Punta Arenas. We finally docked at approximately 2000 L on 22 January, more than a day later than we had hoped. A short but apt memorial service for Captain Smith was attended by all hands shortly after docking, led by a local Catholic priest, before the body was taken away for autopsy and the journey home. Captain Dan Swartz, director of Marine Operations at the University of Washington made the arrangements and will accompany the body back to the states. John Wilson, formerly chief mate for the cruise, has assumed duties as captain.

Much paperwork and the autopsy were required before we were allowed to leave port again. At the same time, the crew and science party had some shore leave to recover from the tragedy. The last of the paperwork finally finished, we left port a little after 0900 L (1200 UTC), with the winds on the nose between 40 and 50 knots. We hope to resume stations some time on Tuesday, 26 January.

So far we have occupied four CTD/Turbulence Profiler stations, which have helped us to shake bugs out of the various systems and to find no sign of tracer near 78 W, and north of 60.6 S. We also have deployed the eastern sound source at 60 S, 78 W. Our plan is to head to the deployment location of the western sound source (58.1 S, 102 W), while sampling for tracer and doing turbulence profiles along the way.