It took us 4 days to sail from Herschel Island to Nome around the coast of Alaska through the Beaufort Sea, the Chukchi Sea and the Bering Strait. Days at sea are a cycle of dawns and dusks, skies at night including the Aurora, and glimpses of snow-capped mountains.
The Bering Strait is 51 miles wide at its narrowest point and separates the Russian Far East from Alaska. We had two exiled Russian naturalists on board who gazed across at Russia through their binoculars. In the centre of the Strait are two small islands, Big Diomede (on the left below) that belongs to Russia and Little Diomede (right below) that belongs to the USA. We stayed on the US side of Little Diomede.
