Sunday morning started like the day before with people drifling slowly into the DOP warehouse 'lab'. But the pace picked up quickly soon after. Mike and Scott said goodbye and a thank you to all with cakes and wine post lunch (remember this is Portugal!) which were quickly dispatched. Zé and Bruno deployed Xplore-2 in the harbor to check for sensing error corrections from the previous days deployment and Zé and Frédéric also checked Iridium connections testing the upper water-column AUVs outside. 

Evening and late into the night the pace was frentic; packing and moving the myriad pieces small and big of the equipment to the Gago Coutinho which had docked the previous night. João Vitorino, as chief-scientist of our cruise was really busy ensuring that all the various groups on board (IH/Lisboa, FEUP/Porto, NTNU/Trondheim and CMRE/La Speiza) were all aligned. Towards this end, he organized a meeting between all parties to carefully go step by step over the next two days. Specifically these two days were for FEUP/CMRE experimentation and FEUP/NTNU practice for Phase-II operations. We converged on S. Mateus bank as the intended target of operations which DOP in the form of Mónica Silva confirmed a likely spot to see ceteceans. It was emphasized that Phase-II the focus of ship operations was tracking cetaceans per the DOP and FEUP scenarios and understanding. CMRE it was agreed, would reduce their manpower to the bare minimum at 4 to ensure there were enough berths and no impact to our operations. The 2.5 hour meeting went thru detailed scenarios between the key players and was attended by the three João's (Vitorino, Sousa and Alves), Mónica Silva and Kanna. 

Loading started soon after around 7.30pm and did not wrap up till 11.30pm. In between the FEUP/NTNU team managed to steal time to grab slices of pizza delivered to the warehouse. An exhausted team went home after being told by João Vitorino to be onboard the Gago Coutinho by 7.30am for an 8am departure Monday morning.