We Now Join Randall Reeves and Harmon Shragge, Voyage Already in Progress

Amidst a flurry of high-profile sailing — the Pacific Cup, Olympic sailing and SailGP — Randall Reeves, Harmon Shragge and the 41-ft aluminum cutter Mōli are quietly easing their way across the top of the world on a multi-leg west-to-east circumnavigation of the Americas, with San Francisco Bay as the start and finish line. Between ocean racing, light-wind dinghy courses in the South of France and a foiling grand prix, the Around the Americas voyage (aka Harmon and Randall’s Voyage) is a low-key, high-miles circumnavigating adventure featuring two Bay Area sailors.

We now join Harmon and Randall at latitude 74 north, the top of the Yukon and (we think) a bit east of Point Barrow/Utiagvic, Alaska: the northernmost town in the United States.

Last summer, Randall and Harmon sailed from San Francisco to Homer, Alaska, where they stowed Mōli for the season. Randall made trips to the boat over the winter to prepare for an attempt at the Northwest Passage, which they began in late June.

Harmon and Randall have been motoring, seeing bears, eating lots of fish, fixing lots of things on Mōli, hiking, visiting tiny, wildly expensive frontier towns, and blogging. For those of you who followed Randall Reeves on his epic Figure 8 Voyage(s) starting in 2017, you know that he’s a wonderful writer. (Harmon Shragge is no slouch on the keyboard, either.)

“No matter the time allotted for preparation, more is wanted,” Randall wrote on July 1. “I had driven to Homer in late February for a month of boat work, to repair the propeller shaft assembly, to replace the engine’s water pump, to figure out why the autopilot had died just south of Kodiak the previous October. Much else made the list that trip, but snow prevented all but interior work.”

“In late May I returned for another month and with a list requiring a size nine font to fit it to one page. In time, all the must-do items were crossed off and a few nice-to-haves as well: a new aluminum dodger, welded tangs on the aft quarter for the Jordan Series Drogue, new Hood sails.”

The early part of Leg Two included a visit to Geographic Harbor, tucked into the base of Alaska’s westward-sweeping “arm” that breaks into the Aleutian Islands. The duo was met by a local population of well-fed brown bears who feast on salmon and are otherwise uninterested in humans.

“A landlocked anchorage draws one’s attention. By landlocked we mean that islands and spits and other terra firma overlap around the harbor so as to entirely close off the small inner body of water from the larger outer. It implies safety in all weathers, something unusual in an anchorage, and suggests that once hooked, you can let your guard down.”

“Already we are men on a schedule,” wrote Randall of the need to make miles to the east. “It’s hard to enjoy one’s present surroundings with so many uncertain miles in one’s future. I can feel it happening now as we make for Sand Point and leave to starboard Alaskan mountains carved out of the sky and their deep, quiet bays. I wish to reject the rush.

“Why pursue a distant prize when the jewel in the lotus is right here? Thrice today I have suggested to Harmon the fun of a summer in the Aleutians over the sure difficulties up north, thrice rejected. We have a goal, I am reminded, and it will not be repudiated. I get it. We need to make miles, but I’ll bet you now that we arrive too early!”

We’ll be checking in with Randall and Harmon as they navigate the ice and make their way through the Northwest Passage, bound for Greenland, then headed for Cape Horn next year.