Harmon and Randall's Voyage…

Leg 2

Blog 9

July 25, 2024

We arrived in Nome on July 14th at 1200 following a not too bad passage through the Bering Sea. The weather was fair and it was good to be back in this familiar but just-a-bit dreary town. Nome has a population of about 3,600 and is best known today as the finish line of the Iditarod race https://iditarod.com. Yup. Known as, “the last great race on earth”, you dog lovers can go from Anchorage to Nome (1,100 miles) with your very own your dog sled in March of any year.

Nome, like San Francisco, was a fairly sleepy and unimportant town through much of its history. When gold was discovered in 1889 by, “three lucky Swedes’”, the population went from a few hundred to almost 20,000. This was the home of the last gold rush in the U.S., complete with rags to riches, fires, disease, claim-jumping, and yes, SF’s own Wyatt Earp. I just love his CV – “itinerant saloon keeper, lawman, gunslinger (shootout at the OK Corral) , and confidence man”. This time, Wyatt tried to make his fortune with the largest saloon in town (out of 60) – Nomes first two story building named the Dexter. Popular for a while with patrons like Jack London, it soon fell to second class and never recovered. It does not stand today.

More apropos to our travels, Roald Amundsen (center) passed through Nome in 1906 on the tail-end of his three-year voyage through the Northwest Passage. He followed that feat by leading the first expedition to reach the South Pole in 1911. He returned to the Seward Peninsula in 1926 on the 348 foot dirigible after landing it at the North Pole.

Nome’s Nugget Inn is its most historic hotel. A recent review of the Inn describes it as, “rundown, dirty, and overpriced”. See you there!

I took this video on my previous trip to Nome. I was on a small plane heading out when this moose crossed the runway.

In the back neighborhoods of Nome, there still exist some old industrial structures that harken back to the golden age. We asked around, but could not identify the original use of this. Any guesses?

These giant gold dredges operated well past the peak of the gold rush. They believed that quantity of dredging would overcome the growing scarcity of the gold. Guess who won?

This is a modern day gold dredger pulling into the dock. These independents head out of town to the nearby offshore areas. They send a diver down with a vacuum and he (yes there are some she’s) simply sucks up the rocks and mud and it is separated on deck, with the fine separation done later on shore.

These miners are searching for the lost beaches of Nome. I think there are six of them that existed before the last ice-age. They are all off shore and no-one really knows where they are, but the miners all study secret maps and topography. The miners go out and stay out for days at a time, and underwater for 5 to 20 hours at a time. We spoke to one who says that he and his two partners can pull in up to $250k for a six or seven day run. They have to give a percentage to the holder of the claim, pay expenses, etc., but that ain’t bad. That said, there is a 90% attrition rate because the work is so hard and dirty.

As you may remember from my last blog, the native population from the Aleutian Islands to just a bit north consider themselves Yupic. As we travel north to Nome, the ethnicity changes to Inuit, or Eskimo.

The Nome front yards are legendary. Not a whole lot of landscaping going on here, but wow, look what those husbands get to get away with!

There is plenty of wildlife outside the city (grizzly bear, wolverine, wolf, fox and reindeer). But I was largely confined to the docks on this trip, and all we had was this ornery squirrel that would not let me pass. Kind of reminded me of a baseball pitcher doing their warmup.

Due to the maritime and industrial nature of the town, they take their hardware stores seriously in Nome (notice the tie-wearing proprietor). But they still have a sense of humor. Notice the “Open” sign on the door.

The owner saw me staring at the ping-pong balls as I couldn’t figure out why they were there. He said, “beer pong. In this town, if it has nothing to do with tools, equipment or hardware, it must have something to do with alcohol”.

Alaska is known for its’ hospitality and generosity and the caring nature of the citizens. Many local residents take it upon themselves to offer help and assistance to us seafaring transients and receive nothing in return. Above right is Wade, a local medical practitioner who generously helped Randall (and other boaters) to do laundry, errands around town, provide local fare (ground moose meat), and even offered to help me get off St. Lawrence Island (but that is for another blog). To the right (I forgot her name…SORRY!!!) was another dock angel. She is a helicopter mechanic by trade, but still made time to take us on errands and provide us with local vegetables and seafood (salmon and king crab!). Here she is holding the fabled salmonberries that she just picked. Thank you both!!!

Back to our favorite French Canadian family of 8 (who have been sailing the world for eight years) whom we last met in Dutch Harbor, and who pulled up alongside of us in Nome ten days later. I needed to understand how the parents and the children could be so friendly and lovely after so many years at sea so we all went out for pizza (they rarely go our to eat as they cook all of their own food on their boat). I often fantasize that if my wife and children were as strong as these people, we could also sail the world. But it suddenly struck me that I would also have to be as strong and tough as the father (Marcus) – and do you know what, I do not think I am that tough!

A most lovely and beautiful thank you note was waiting in our boat the next morning when I woke up.

Here are a group of the sea faring kids who catch and clean their own fish.

Well, it’s getting time to leave Nome. While Randall is working on the engine, navigation, sails, and boat electronics, I am working on tasks befitting a man of my experience and education (laundry, boat cleaning and shopping). To the left, I am doing mine and Randall’s laundry. My laundry for the last two weeks is to the right and Randall’s is to the left and I am very confused over the differential. The picture to the right is how we get fuel into Mōli.

A couple of last parting shots. To the left, Randall finally found the lost stateroom of Mōli, and he seems quite comfortable there. To the right are the famous Alaskan Red King Crabs. The crab fishery has been shut down below and above the Aleutian Islands. But it is open much higher north in the Bering Sea, and we were able to get some of these super tasty creatures. We used the recipe for lobster rolls (chopped celery and mayo) and substituted the crab for lobster. Yum!