Chukchi Sea

15th Sept

Alaska has been on our port side for nearly 4 days now and we have'nt seen any of it yet.................low cloud, rain and fog !!!!!!!! We reckon it's not there at all, a figment of someone's imagination !!! LOL :-)
Winds come and go, but we are making very good time and should be in Nome by late Wednesday / early Thursday morning. Watching a few films idles away some of the spare time, or reading a book. I'm on "The Map that changed the World" at the moment. It's about William Smith, the first man to map the geological strata of the British isles, in fact, any where in the world..................it was the first ........completed on 1st August 1815.
Another tug had appeared as if by magic on the AIS in the evening, some 16 miles to our north. As he's travelling at nearly the same speed as us, he's no problem.

16th Sept

Pass Point Hope and start to cross the big open section of the Chukchi Sea that announces the entrance to the Bering Strait.......................oooeerrrrrrrrrrrrr missus.............once you're going through.......you're going through !!!!
It could be a bit like running the tide back home on the Kent estuary............i've done it in a canoe...................let me tell you, when that tide is taking you towards the railway bridge, you're going through whether you like it or not !!!!! ha ha ha
Hopefully there is'nt a 3 foot drop off the other side of the Bering Strait !!!!!! One thing at least........there's ice waiting for us , like the Bellot Strait.
We did actually catch a fleeting glimpse of the Alaskan mainland this morning, the ..................mountains...............distant, but there. Then it went haywire, the cloud came back down and the rain started again..............
We're on track to cross the Arctic circle today, we reckon 66' 33' N should be about 23:00 this evening. That is officially the NW Passage transitted from East to West.............yyyyeeeehhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa !!!! ;-)
We lost the tug this morning in a heavy swell, we wonder if he has run a shore for some shelter. However, we have a new vessel to watch, a dredger has appeared on the AIS....looks as though he is heading for Nome too.
No, he's not ......he turned away from us later in the night.......no idea where he's heading
Really rough and windy over night, especially as we came nearer the Bering Strait........just as i said. I missed some of it, but, Steve said sections were really rough and others flat calm...........weird. I've seen someting like that at Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland.........the water is running so fast, it becomes calm.
So, yes, an unpleasant night, rocking and rolling, plus i think we are all getting a bit tired, it's been none stop since Camping Island (we left on 8th Sept)

17th Sept

We are through the Bering Strait............now in the Bering Sea..........errrmmmmm......not much calmer i might add. We still have storm sails up..............around 25 to 30 knots of wind and reasonably big seas...we estimate 3.0m, possibly 3.5m.....plenty of water over the decks.
It slowly eases a bit as night approaches, we eventually had to put the engine on and motor sail the 30 or 40 miles to Nome.
We arrived late in the night, spoke to the harbour master early on, he said can we anchor outside the harbour as they work going on with the lights etc etc.........so safer outside till morning, as we don't know the port.
We anchored in about 4m of water and had a blissful night, hardly any rocking at all, a good anchorage protected by the stone moles to the north west of us.

Not easy taking a photo of the chart plotter when you're rolling about, it's night and everyone else is in bed !!!