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July 8, 2009 – At Sea, 65 40N 168 20W
by Herb McCormick
(July 8): Along with Columbus and Vancouver and Cook and so many others, Captain-Commander Vitus Jonassen Bering of the Russia Imperial Navy was one of the grand explorers in what may be termed the great age of discovery. Over the course of two major expeditions in the early-to-mid 1700s, Bering greatly expanded the Russian empire from Siberia to North America, pioneered the geography of the North Pacific Ocean, and laid the groundwork for Russian trade and settlement in the American West.
And today, in a significant milestone on our own voyage of discovery, the crew of Ocean Watch successfully transited the 50-mile strait that bears Bering’s name. It was cold, drizzly, windy and daunting; or, in other words, precisely what we expected. As kooky as it sounds, I reckon we wouldn’t have wanted to pass the Bering Strait in any other weather.
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| Today, the crew of Ocean Watch successfully transited the 50-mile strait that bears Bering’s name. It was cold, drizzly, windy and daunting. |
We spent the previous night in a rather open anchorage in a place called Port Clarence, situated behind a low-lying scrap of real estate called Point Spencer. On the chart, the crooked peninsula looks startlingly like Cape Cod, only upside-down. There was no Hyannis, however, just a towering 400-meter antenna adjacent to a long airstrip and a cluster of buildings, some lit, though of actual human habitation there was nary a whisper. Skipper Mark Schrader, in his personal log, described the scene thusly:
“Anchored last night in the large bay of Port Clarence, a few miles from the tiny settlement of Teller. The spit ‘sheltering’ us from the Bering Sea was barely above sea level. As the fog and rain moved in with the rising southeasterly breeze it did seem as though we were anchored in the middle of the ocean – and it felt like it as well. After a bouncy night on anchor followed by no sunrise and a solid 20-knots of cold, southerly breeze, we were all ready to hoist anchor and sails before breakfast.”
A serene anchorage, clearly, this was not. As we raised the main, with a single reef, and set the staysail, a small plane came careening overhead and executed a rather remarkable downwind landing. The great Waldo Pepper would have applauded.
Into the Bering Sea we sailed, ticking off a steady 9 knots. We hadn’t previously had a real taste of the Bering – we’d motored almost all the way from Dutch Harbor to Nome – but we now found ourselves sitting down to a banquet. Ocean Watch seemed pleased with the circumstances; some of the crew were not. Trucking along on a close reach into sloppy beam seas, the motion was lively, though the scenery was just the opposite. The low profile of the Seward Peninsula looked like an inside-out Dalmatian – a long expanse of black ridge freckled with countless white splotches of snow. Lots of words came to mind, none of them floral bouquets. Rather: Nasty. Bleak. Unforgiving. Ridiculous.
On we sailed.
Visibility was crummy, which was a bit of a shame. In one of her more famous proclamations, Governor Sarah Palin once said you could see Russian from her homeland, and if it was ever going to happen for us, today was the day. The Russian island of Big Diomede was twenty-odd miles to port, with Siberia another twenty-five beyond. Sadly, we never caught a glimpse of either.
(If you’ll indulge us for a moment, we’d like to take a slight detour from today’s log to inject a brief political observation, something we absolutely promise not to do on any sort of regular basis. But we did happen to be in Alaska at the time Governor Palin announced her resignation, and many people have written to ask our impressions of the day the news came down. And we readily admit the people with whom we interacted represent the tiniest minority, and that Governor Palin obviously won over a lot of Alaskan hearts to rise to her level of public office. All that said, the reaction of everyone we came in contact with was unfettered, universal joy. We’d noticed in Juneau, the state capital, the numerous ‘Where’s Sarah?’ bumper stickers, a snarky commentary on her prolonged absences from the state offices, so we knew she was on shaky ground there. But we’re left with the impression that her eventful, ill-fated vice-presidential campaign, which obviously left her drained and exhausted, did much the same to the citizens of her state. Should she eventually decamp to the Lower 48 to pursue her dreams, whatever they may be, one suspects that the collective eyes of Alaska will remain clear and dry. Thank you for this indulgence. We will now return to our regularly scheduled voyage.)
By mid-afternoon we were abeam of Cape Prince of Wales, which was only five miles away but we couldn’t see it. The Cape is the line of demarcation between the Bering Sea to the south and the Chukchi Sea to the north…in other words, smack-dab in the middle of the Bering Strait. On deck, you could see smoky breath in the chilly air. In the last four hours, the water temperature dropped from 52 degrees Fahrenheit to 42. A fair current of up to three knots was scooting us on our way. At the change of watch, the fresh crew came on deck swathed in new layers of clothing. No one was laughing anymore at the silly hats that in Seattle had seemed so funny.
An hour later, the cape, and the Bering Sea, were behind us. The next significant waypoint was the Arctic Circle itself.
- Herb McCormick with photographs by David Thoreson
This crew log submitted by Iridium OpenPort and Stratos
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