One of my current heros, in a minor sort of way, is a sailor named Richard Hudson,who owns the schooner ROsemary Ruth, with which I fell in love, and which is presently on the hard in a yard up the Hudson River soewhere. He himself took off from Toronto last Spring in the Issuma, a larger schooner of more modern design, and sailed up the Saint Lawrence to where it debouches into the Labrador Sea, sailed on across to Labrador and from there to Greenland, up the coast of Numavik, and now, by god, he has sailed all the way through the fabled Northwest Passage into the Beaufort Sea, the legendary quest of ancient explorers like Franklin (19th C.) and Hudson (16th). He has reached ALaska, having started out in March in Toronto.

Richard's travels are detailed in a blog at:

http://www.sailblogs.com/member/rhudson/

but his satellite phone has been dead for a few days and only an email from the Coast Guard showed us he had made the big advance into the Beaufort Sea. "He expected that the next port would be either Nome or Dutch Harbour, AK and the ETA is appprox. 3 weeks.", says the Coast Guard in Iceland.

On 4 September, according to a later CG email to a relative, Richard had been unable to anchor at Barret, Alaska, and was setting course for Dutch Harbor, the large port at the end of the Alaskan Peninsula/beginning of the Aleutian Islands. He is currently facing 30-60 mph winds and temperatures around freezing.

He has been through worse.

   I am very proud of him !

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