At Sea, At Last

 

Conditions have lifted in the Bering Sea to allow Ella Hibbert and the Yeva to finally leave St. Paul Island this morning and set sail for the Northeast Passage over Siberia and Scandinavia. Hopefully, by this fall, Hibbert will have completed the first solo circumnavigation of the Arctic Ocean. For the first time this year, all three sailors we've been tracking - Ella Hibbert, Tamara Klink, and Matt Rutherford - are all at sea at the same time. 

Klink has passed the Diomede Islands (she sailed north of the islands this time, not between them like she did last year) and then headed west (!) toward Siberia and the Northeast Passage. It still isn't clear if she was going to reach the Atlantic via the Northeast or the Northwest Passage to return her ship, the Sardinha, to Brazil, but right now, she's less than 10 miles off of Russia's Cape Deshnev, the easternmost point of Asia. She may just be tacking west as she heads north towards Alaska's Hope Point, but right now she's right at the entry to the Northwest Passage.

Storm conditions have also settled down on the Barents Sea and Matt Rutherford is underway again. His present course has him crossing north of Russia's Novaya Zemlya archipelago. The northernmost tip of the archipelago is at about 77° N, which is the same as his current latitude. If the sea ice allows him to maintain that latitude, it's a straight shot east across the Kara Sea from the tip of Novaya Zemlya to the Vilkitsky Strait between Siberia's Taimyr Peninsula and Bolshevik Island and on into the Laptev Sea. The shortest-distance, straight-line route to the Laptev is to stay on the 77th parallel, although clearing the top of the Taimyr will require him to go north to about the 78th. However, I wasn't sure if he was going to take that direct route or dip south closer to the mainland (less ice, closer to civilization in case of emergency). 

Hibbert and Klink (if she's heading that way) will also have to pass over the Taimyr, although in the opposite direction, as they complete their passages. Which brings up the question as to whether any of them will encounter the others in the great, wide Arctic as they take their separate voyages. 

Three separate sailors in the Northeast Passage at the same time! That has got to be a historical first.