Onward, westward: to Herschel Island

Weathering the northwesterly in Tuk was the best idea. It really blew hard for 24 hours. So hard that the water level on the lagoon rose by 1 meter and we had to keep a sharp eye on our mooring at the dock.

After a few hours of motoring out of Tuk, we fall off and set sail in the onsetting wind. What begins is a brisk sail that shall take us all the way to Herschel Island, about 130NM. As wind continues to build we reef the main and switch from the genoa to the smaller jib. The water is incredibly murky and with the 28 knots of wind the entire boat gets sprayed in salty mud water. The windows are increasingly opaque. This MacKenzie water really is a muddy affair.

On the boat we are now reconfiguring for a crew of 3: instead of 3-hour watches, we do 4-hour watches, such that the off-watch person can still get a full 8-hour of rest. Also the board-time is now changed from UTC-6 to UTC-8. I find it useful to have the board time synchronized to the environment. On the other hand it means changing the timezone setting in the various systems rather often.

At 2200 we drop anchor just off the renown sauna of Herschel Island, a Territorial Park maintained by Canadian rangers. But landing has to wait until tmrw, for now everybody is happy to drop to beds. Anyways, the weather forecast indicates that we might stay here anything between 2 and 5 nights.

Next morning we take the dinghy ashore and find a well-maintained but abandoned facilities. The shelter room is in excellent state but the sauna is locked. Turns out, we are too late in the season for a sauna experience. The spit the settlement is build on seems to sinking, all buildings have already lifted but the trend seems clear: eventually the spit is doomed.

Meanwhile there are four boats in the anchorage: Vanuliy, Aglaia and Aegir have also arrived. Everybody is running into the same weather barrier as us.

On the morning of Wednesday 26th, we wake up to a 2°C outside and the salon has cooled to 8°C over night. Snow flakes are falling and melting on the windows. We switch on the heater, which warms the salon to 14°C by noon. At 1300 the new ice report is out: positive! Also we track the super yacht Emotional on MarineTraffic: it is blasting at 11 knots through the dense-ice zone: that can only mean the ice is manageable. Now just the head wind has to die down and we should be able to depart at 1600, Aug 26th. The first feasible anchorage is Demarcation Bay in Alaska!Read more