Off again - 0745 departure - rolling fog just lifting and sunlight in patches on the island and around the harbour. Stunning. Bering sea not being too unreasonable - started snarly but has abated. Discovered that you can't buy silicone spray in the supermarkets - or if you can, it's disguised - and we're having real difficulty getting the main up and down and reefed because the slides are sticking in the track. We have a tiny splash of good old Oz H4000 spray and I'll go up the mast with it perhaps tomorrow when we're a bit more settled in. Berri packet to the eyeballs - food for 3 for 90 days plus 3 sets of (reduced ) gear + 400 odd litres of fuel. Russian fuel, we discovered, mostly bought in Adak.
Th Plan - heading for the western end of Nunivak island then to Nome where we will wait for the ice to do whatever it wants to do around Barrow and make the next decision there. I listened to a bit of a doomsayer yesterday who confirmed my own feeling that the really critical bit of all this will be getting out safely if we get as far as Devon Island. And some Norwegians who wintered their boat in Nome arrived in town and were really helpful. Spanish boat Amodina following us in about a week. Different approach - big boat, massive water and diesel tanks, no watermaker...
Huge thanks to everyone in Dutch - especially Dave B - and his fishing boat skippers who are all somewhere ahead of us near the Pribilofs. We do a couple of skeds with Dave and the boats each day.
We have crossed the busy shipping lane west of Akutan pass - new AIS box working well but the tendency is to rely on it instead of keeping a lookout..
Comms - will try to stay with sailmail - this laptop won't log in to the sailmail telnet system using iridium - dont know why - gets all the way to the server - so have two laptops going at the mo. Will try sailmail for this one.
Boring blog - sorry - but at least you get one.
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