To New Siberian Islands
We have now been five days on the Laptev Sea and made very slow progress.
The reason for this is the weather, of course. After the first two days of
reasonably good sailing, the wind changed direction and started blowing
from the east/south-east which is, in fact, the direction of the
prevailing winds in this part of the world so it didn't come as a
surprise. We hove to the other day after banging one and a half days
against 30+ knot winds, and spent the night drifting comfortably and
waiting for the wind either to abate or change direction.
The wind is presently about 15 knots, still from the south-east but as we
are heading to the south sailing is once again enjoyable. But this is only
temporary as the weather forecast predicts the wind to increase tomorrow
to 20-25 knots from the east/south-east which is the exact direction where
we should eventually be proceeding. We are now on our way to the
southernmost island of the New Siberian Islands called Bolshoy Lyahovskiy.
We will anchor there at the very tip of the narrow piece of land that juts
out into the Laptev Sea. It is called Cape Vagina (I am not joking!) and
we should arrive there later this evening.
From the Bolshoy Lyahovskiy Island, we'll only have about 60 nautical
miles to the East Siberian Sea, and about six days to Pevek where we'll
stop to take fuel. Because there is ice quite close to the shore on the
East Siberian Sea, we'll stay anchored till the winds become more
favourable in order to avoid the rather unpleasant combination of strong
headwinds and ice. We expect this to happen within the next three days or
so.
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