Meanwhile, In Russia

 

After a mere 24 hours in Russian territorial waters, Matt Rutherford's Chimera was boarded by the Russian Coast Guard. His papers and permits were all in order and after two hours they released him to continue his trip over the top of Siberia, but as he put it, "they're not playing around." 

Remember, Russia is at war, and against a Ukranian army employing unconventional, asymmetric tactics, such as drone attacks. They're not about to let some random sail boat into their waters, even if that boat is at latitude 79° N, 100 miles north of the remote Novaya Zemlya archipelago.

Ella Hibbert isn't taking any chances. She and the Yeva left the U.S.'s Saint Paul Island on August 6 and she's sailed straight into harbor at Komsomolskaya Bay and the administrative center of the Providensky District in the northeastern part of Cape Dezhnev, the easternmost point in Russia, presumably to check in with the authorities there and present her papers before sailing through the Northeast Passage. "Presumably," I say, because she hasn't updated her social media since leaving St. Paul, so her motives to this point are still a mystery, at least to me.    

Even more mysterious (to me) are the motives of Tamara Klink and the Sardinha 2. After leaving Homer, Alaska, where the Sardinha was dry-docked over the winter, she spent some two weeks in Nome before setting sail again. She's currently some 110 miles north of the former town of Iultin in Russia's Far Eastern Federal District. Right now, she's tacking even further north and may be trying to stay out of Russian territorial waters, but Wrangel Island in the Chukchi Sea is west of her, and sea ice (actually, the polar ice cap) probably won't let her pass 100 miles north of Wrangel and will force her to sail through Russian waters between the island and the mainland. But I don't know. She's been posting to the 'Gram, but mostly promoting her book (it's in Portuguese so I haven't read it) and not about her itinerary or intentions.

It's possible that Hibbert and Klink aren't posting specifics about their trip to social media in order to be discreet and avoid drawing unnecessary attention from the Russian security apparatus, although that hasn't stopped Rutherford (but look what just happened to him). It's also possible that they don't have an internet link - Rutherford posted that he expects to be offline through at least some portion of his trip through the Northeast Passage. 

They're not playing around. Be careful out there.