Tuesday August 23rd. On Anchor. Bolshevik Island .
Guba Solnechova ( Sun Bay ) Northern Siberian Islands. 78 .11 N / 102 . 57 E.
There's a book , 'The Uttermost Place on Earth', written about Tierra Del Fuego.
No it's not! This is.
And we're glad and relieved to be here. We're on anchor in this sheltered bay, as the wind rises and the ice thunders down wind outside in Proliv Vilkitski ( Vilkitski Strait)
Early yesterday morning euphoria reigned. We posed for our cameras, and raised our glasses ( Jack, Thanks for the Middleton Whiskey ---- from A&L G., only the best! ).
Cape Chelyuskin Polar Station, with its ½ dozen buildings, antennas and oil tanks was a couple of miles across the broken ice, access possible, but dodgy. We stayed out.
Our information was that the way forward was fairly clear of ice. With confidence we plotted our course, through Vilkitski Strait and out into the Kara Sea.
It was not to be.
Every direction we turned, we met with dead ends. Even from the vantage of high on the mast you can see only about three miles. Ice, viewed from a distance, always looks inpenetrable. Very often, on close approach, the white line is seen to consist of floes with open water between, three tenths or maybe only two tenths of the sea surface being ice covered. This is called 3/10 ice or 2/10, easily navigated; although it often concentrates in bands, not so navigable.
Nonetheless, by evening we had made about thirty five miles. Two events then coincided.
We could get no further.
A sat-phone call from Murmansk warned of a rising north-west gale, or possibly even storm, and an associated changing ice situation; pack ice, 10/10, sweeping in with it.
They suggested that we make for the shelter of this bay on the south side of Bolshevik Island-more easily said than done, as the ice had already thickened around us.
That it was twenty five miles backwards from whence we had come was now incidental.
Some of the way back was easy enough, but some most definitely was not. We hope that the banging and scraping hasn't done damage to our centreboard and rudder. Several times both were seen to jump as we drove through tight ice, engine revving and poles pushing. The grim prospect of being swept back eastwards into the Laptev Sea lent strength and urgency to our efforts.
At 00.30 hours this morning we dropped anchor, and here we are.
Also See A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE NORTH EAST PASSAGE
Evening Light in Sun bay
Northabout in Sun Bay
