Aurora Borealis

So I'm writing this at 8:30 pm central time on 8/27. We're at 68 deg 22´.50 N 112 deg 50.32´W doing 6 kts. We left Cambridge Bay yesterday afternoon around 4 o'clock after saying goodbye to Anthony, Wolfgang and Nestor; Hans' friends. We headed out of the harbor under warm clear sunny skies with 20-25 kts on the beam to slightly behind. It was perfect sailing conditions and it instantly got all of us into great spirits. We were cruising along at 8-9 kts and maintained that all through the night. Alex and I had the 11 pm to 2 am watch and as I just said had comfortable sailing at great speeds. Near the end of the watch Alex was down below fixing something and I was hanging out in the doghouse (the little nav station in front of the cockpit). I poked up on deck to make sure everything was still fine. We maintained a dark twilight all through the night so you could just barely still see everything ok. I looked up and there was a thin white cloud stretched across high above the horizon in front of us. All of a sudden it started moving, disappearing in one spot and getting brighter and bigger in another. I ran down got Alex and then we woke up the rest of the crew. It was our first sighting of the Aurora Borealis aka Northern Lights. We spent the next half hour watching the show. It looked like veils of dust falling out of the sky constantly changing shape. Unfortunately we didn't get any crazy coloration, only white, but it was still incredible and awe inspiring. Hopefully we get some more clear nights as it gets darker so the show will continue. We are now back under motor power as the wind died out around noon today and we are making ground towards our probable next stop of Dutch Harbor, Alaska. It's about 2,000 miles from here and we have to make it out of the Northwest Passage proper, across the top of Alaska, through the Bering Strait and down to the Aleutian Islands. It's a lot of ground to cover and should take us around 14 more days. It's a long stretch of sailing but there are not many exciting places to stop, or not any exciting places to stop for that matter, so we're going to try to press on and knock off this big chunk of our remaining trip as fast as we can.