Harmon and Randall's Voyage…

Leg 2

Blog 13

August 1, 2024

Time flies, but Mōli pushes s through the water heading north. Since leaving the Brevig/Teller/Port Clarance area Tuesday morning, we have made good progress. Most notable is that we came within 16 nautical miles of Russia as we passed through the Bering Straits and the Diomede Islands.

There are actually two islands side-by-side. Little Diomede (to the right) is U.S. territory while Big Diomede (on the left) is owned by Russia.

Here is a picture of the small community on Little Diomede (less than 100 people) that Nathan (last blog) took a while back. As it is not far from Brevig Mission, there is a fair amount of back and forth between the native populations. Randall and I wanted to stop there, but on the morning we left, it was overcast and blowing fairly strong. As you can see, there is no harbor and there are enough shoals to scare a keelboat.

Among the natives I spoke to, none of the current generation has ever stepped foot on the Russian side of the Bering Straits (including Big Diomede). But I did hear many stories of their parents generation who were able to go back and forth under the radar and with no problems. For as many years as I have known, I have heard that non-natives who made their way to the Russian side were taken into custody and had their boots confiscated. That said, the big news of today is the prisoner swap with Russia. I have not checked the list to see if there were included any poor sailors who lost their way!

Above is another photo Nathan sent to me. This is a huddle of walrus that he and his hunting party came across last fall not so far from Little Diomede Island. I will spare you the after picture.

Before we left Brevig, we encountered two mechanical problems that required significant work. First was the carburetor of our outboard (needed to be replaced) and failure of autopilot necessitated changing a connector (Randall back in the hole, so to speak).

Thank you to Marcus and Raphael for picking us up on the beach and towing us back to our boat after our outboard decided to stop working.

We spent one more night off Brevig, and left early the next morning. After a while, we pass through the Bering Straits and leave behind the Bering Sea and enter the Chukchi Sea.

Here we are cruising along at 0300. Not even dark. Not too rough and good wind.

But we did notice that as we travel north, the temperature is going down. Water temperature is now 34, as is the outside temperature. Wrong wind conditions for our diesel heater, so inside temperature is in the 40″s, but feels colder.

Kind of going through a spell of bad luck. The autopilot fails again and is kaput….and Randall is running out of reasons why. And the garlic bread that we had been saving for the past week did not wait for us. Life on the high seas!

Here is a photo of the Ice Report for Thursday August 1. The “o” is our boat position off Pt. Franklin. The yellow is oncoming ice that is moving in the direction we are traveling. The “x” is where we will have to pass through on our way to get past Pt. Barrow. And the wind is blowing the ice in our direction. If it gets too close, we will not be able to pass. Tune in tomorrow to see how we get by.