Randall Reeves, Harmon Shragge and ‘Moli’ Departing for Alaska

This past Saturday we joined a crowd of well-wishers at the Sausalito Yacht Club who came by to wish Randall Reeves and his new crew member, Harmon Shragge, as they prepare to head out the Gate. If you know Randall and Harmon’s sailing history, you know they’re probably not headed south in the fall for some warm tropical paradise. The plan is to leave, weather permitting, on Tuesday and take the Great Circle route north to Homer, Alaska, with the goal of arriving in early October.

As you may recall, Randall Reeves is a veteran of two singlehanded circumnavigations, one continuing into the epic 40,000-mile Figure 8 Voyage around the Earth and the Americas. Harmon has appeared in the pages of Latitude 38 as a veteran of the Clipper Race and the Singlehanded Transpacific Race. The pair met as volunteers for the Farallon Patrol, bringing people and supplies to the scientists on the Farallon Islands. This led to a plan for another voyage around the Americas over the course of three or four years. The map above shows the intended route, which includes the “wrong-way” rounding of Cape Horn in a couple of years.

The first leg of the voyage will take them to Homer, AK, where the boat will be put on the hard and stored until May, when they plan to resume the trek north with the intention of reaching Point Barrow, the northernmost point of the US at 71 degrees north, by early July. Then, if the ice breaks up in the Northwest Passage, they will head east with the goal of reaching Nova Scotia by the end of summer or early next fall. The boat will again be put on the hard for the winter. In spring 2025 the voyage will resume as the sailors head south to eventually round Cape Horn, with the dive to 57 degrees south delivering the uphill battle against the prevailing Southern Hemisphere trade winds.

As part of the evolving world of voyaging, Moli is now departing with Starlink aboard, so we hope they use their bandwidth and occasional calm seas to help us follow along a bit more closely. You can follow Randall, Harmon and Moli on their tracker here.

We all wish you fair winds and following seas.