False Pass to Nome (Patreon)

Hey all! We are now sailing/motoring from Nunavik Island to Nome, Alaska, and the conditions are easy so I have a good moment to write a small update! We left False Pass and entered the Bering Sea around a week ago in 20-30 knot winds. There is a long (15 nautical miles) channel that leads into the Bering Sea, but it is quite shallow, around 6-8 meters the whole time, and surrounded by sand banks. Going through there with all that wind was interesting and we were happy to make it out to the sea.
A quick two night sail later we found ourselves anchored at the Nunavik Island (in the photos). A really impressive spot with scenery that we definitely are not used to! The whole island is under permafrost and there was still snow and ice on the ground too. In one of the photos you can see how the eroding sandbank hides ice/permafrost underneath.
We spotted several muskox (we didn't know there are some on this island so imagine our initial suprise...). They are HUGE!
 At the anchorage we were joined by our friends on the sailing vessel Libertaire. A rare opportunity for us to share an anchorage with another boat! The folks (2 parents, 3 kids) on Libertaire are also heading for the Northwest Passage so we expect to be sharing more anchorages and harbours with them in the future.
I also have to mention that we've now also finally found some Japanese glass fishing floats. These were used up until the 70s or so but you can still find them above the high tide line on sandy beaches, IF you get very lucky. Apparently some still float around in the Pacific and they wash up during big onshore storms.
We left Nunavik around 36 hours ago for Nome, we didn't see a really good weather window in the forecast so decided to take these light winds and motorsail. This way we will be in Nome plenty early to relax and prepare the boat.
We've just now passed the Yukon river and Kuskokwim river deltas, these are some really long and big rivers that spew out tons of driftwood. We evidenced that by having to navigate through a lot of driftwood for around 40 miles. Despite trying to keep a sharp lookout we did hit couple and we actually got a small one stuck on our rudder for a while...

Our friends Kuutti and Juuso are joining us in Nome in around 10 days. In the meanwhile we have a lot to do on the boat, one of the more recent issues is that there suddenly is some (what I suspect is) water in our main diesel tank. The strange thing is that our triple-Racor water separators don't seem to get rid of it, maybe it's just so emulsified. It might be some kind of a diesel additive or wax also. Our engine does not seem to mind, but in Nome we will still need to empty and clean the whole tank to find out what's happening, we can't leave for the Northwest Passage like this.

We will try and do a short live stream from Nome before leaving, I'll post about it here later. I'll likely be only able to schedule it shortly beforehand but I'll leave the recording online if you want to watch afterwards.

The boat live tracking link is now at http://alluringarctic.com/tracking 

That's it for this time, thanks a lot for the support!!