Bering, Chukchi & Kara

 

Bering Sea: Ella Hibbert and the Yeva are back at sea. After leaving Saint Paul Island last week, she sailed due north into Komsomolskaya Bay on the south side of Cape Dezhnev, the easternmost point in Russia. I incorrectly presumed she was there to check in with the authorities at the administrative center of Providensky before sailing further through Russian territorial waters, but it appears that she never docked in the harbor, just anchored for the night in the middle of the bay. It seems more likely she was just looking for a safe harbor to grab some rest away from the ice and arctic winds before proceeding rather than showing her papers, but we can only guess because she hasn't been updating her social media. In any event, she left the Bay this morning and is currently rounding Cape Dezhnev on her way to cross the Arctic Circle and enter the Chukchi Sea.

Chukchi Sea: Tamara Klink and the Sardinha 2 are already up in the Chukchi, but what she's doing up there is anyone's guess. Unlike Hibbert, she has been posting updates to social media, but generally about a week after the fact. She was still posting updates about her sea voyage from Homer, Alaska to Nome even after she had been in Nome for a week. and if you only followed her on Instagram and not the Sardinha's tracking page, you'd think that she was still in Nome. However, since leaving Nome, she's crossed the Arctic Circle headed for either the Northwest Passage over Alaska and Canada or the Northeast Passage over Russia and Scandinavia. She initially headed northwest over Russia, but generally stayed a good 100 miles plus beyond the coast of Siberia, as if trying to stay out of Russian waters, although at one point she was a mere dozen or so miles off the coast of Cape Dez. But since Sunday, she's been headed even further north and then northeast, either heading back toward Alaska and the Northwest Passage or else setting herself up to sail around the north side of Wrangel Island, giving the mainland a wide berth. 

Kara Sea: Meanwhile, as Hibbert is sailing west and Klink is sailing north/northeast, Matt Rutherford is sailing through the Northeast Passage in the opposite direction. He's currently in the Kara Sea heading due north in order to pass above Komsomolets, the northernmost island in the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago. He's already sailed north over the Novaya Zemlya archipelago, but passing the Severnaya will take him all the way up to the 81st latitude or beyond. He's already up at 80° 38' N and still heading due north. Earlier this month, he set a personal record at 81° 14' N while crossing over Norway's Svalbard Islands, but he should break that record above Komsomolets. I need to point out that there's a big, wide Vilkitsky Strait between the archipelago and the Siberian mainland down around the 77th parallel. According to Google AI, it's possible but extremely difficult to sail through the heavily restricted Vilkitsky, which connects the Kara and Laptev Seas. The passage is normally locked in thick ice fields and requires specialized ice-class vessels or nuclear icebreaker escorts, but even that's apparently too easy for Rutherford, the total madman.  It will be interesting to see if Hibbert and possibly Klink sails north of the archipelago like Rutherford, or south through the Strait.