We are 75 miles south of Nome approaching the Yukon River Delta. This river is huge and the delta area looks like the Mississippi; all kinds of low islands, shallow sloughs, and spoil areas. It is also populated with several native villages. It would be great to explore in the daylight especially with local knowledge, but we need to make tracks. We departed Nome at 6:20 AM in the dark. What a new experience after all the daylight we have had. Sundown was about 10:30 PM last night so we have quite a bit of darkness now. Seas are varied and sloppy, up to 2 meters. Crew changes are hard. We are missing Kip. At the same time we are breaking in Ed; so far so good; he is doing great.

It is 8 PM ADT, and we’ve just been boarded by the USCG vessel Hamilton. Randy, you will remember our boarding in Dixon Entrance after 9/11. This was the same experience – routine safety inspection – out of sight of land, but this time we are 13 miles from Russian territory. We just crossed the Arctic Circle too, so that is another big milestone. We have been above it for nearly a month.

The remaining big deal is that tonight we will go as far west as we will go on this trip. Dutch Harbor is a little bit east of us, as is Hawaii. Seas are building, and we are not looking forward to tonight’s shift.

Later tonight we will go by the Diomede islands. The east island belongs to the US and the west island is Russia. There is less than 1 mile between the two. Can you imagine living with that tension every day? Too bad it will be dark as we go by; probably won’t get a picture.

We just passed a 700′ freighter that has 100′ beam. This is a very big boat and the only one seen other than the CG Cutter Hamilton today.

Oh, PS.   We passed the routine safety inspection with flying colors and have the “gold” certificate to prove it.

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Or in other words, Geraldine is once again the talk of the town! We thought it’d be a good idea to take the small boat entrance to get to the public dock (yes they have a real dock – a very big deal in this part of the world.) Skip Boselli will have the last laugh because I always was jumping him for cutting the corner. Well, this time I got caught & we are hard aground at the entrance to the harbor. The western Arctic is incredibly shallow. We have run all day & night in under 30 feet of water. We expect the same all the way to Barrow, AK. The Canadian Coast Guard tried to free us tonight but gave up because of a falling tide. They will resume in the morning. We are currently “listing” about 7 degrees to starboard so Pat will have trouble staying in his bunk tonight. We are all fine and in good humor. More soon. We have made arrangements for fuel in the AM and have been in contact with the RCMP; they are very helpful, but we are still very stuck!

8/25 PS: Last night was scary. As the tide went down, Geraldine listed to starboard about 20 degrees. The freezer drawer opened by itself, fell out on the floor with a loud bang, awakening Shane (Kip was already awake.) She woke me up. We started shifting weight to port to prevent further listing. In the midst of it all we looked up at the sky and saw brilliant greenish-white northern lights. We all prayed that God would watch over us and keep us safe. At 8 AM the inflatable from the CCG vessel Nahidik came to help pull us off the mound of gravel that captured us. We used the 150 HP of the inflatable , the bow thruster and finally Geraldine’s main engine to get us off. Within a few feet we were clear. We are now sitting at the dock in Tuktoyaktuk waiting on fuel, to reprovision and to make arrangements for the next crew change. You’ll see we had a taste of Salinas as we found beautiful lettuce in Tuk, even if if Romaine was $4.95 a head! We also cleared out of Canada through customs with the aid of the Tuktoyaktuk RCMP.

8/25 6:30 PM Anchored behind Pullen Island (69 deg 46′ N,134 deg 26′ W) We got fuel & successfully departed Tuktoyaktuk. We went over 10 miles from the harbor in 12 feet or less of water! Wow, is this ever different from the east coast.  Pat made another loaf of bread; onion and garlic and it was delicious!

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(73 deg 50.9′ N, 095 deg 08.0’W — Heading South) The water maker parts arrived! [ed. Charlotte reported the details in her comment] After fueling again from the beach this morning, we headed south in snow flurries across Barrow Strait and into Peel Sound. The crossing was pretty good with swells between 6-10 feet with a 25 knot wind. We found an anchorage at 11:00 pm and are all ready for the sack. We saw no ice today and again got encouraging ice reports for an open path through. We saw several seals and birds as we went. Kathy Robertson made three City Team burgees for us so Geraldine again flies colors out front in the bow!

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