We had a morning flight to Nome, Alaska and, upon arrival, found out that the Silver Explorer, our ship for the next 49 days, had been delayed in arriving because the port was closed due to weather. Our luggage was loaded on to a box truck and all the guests were transported by school bus to a hospitality room at a local church. We were free to wander around Nome and told to return to the church by 2pm for transfer to the ship. We wandered around the small town and had a drink at the Board of Trade Saloon, which was an interesting place. At 2pm we found out that there was an additional delay due to customs clearance and a U.S. Coast Guard inspection. We met friends from previous cruises (Fred & Darla and Mau & Kat) who had just gotten off the ship and spent some time with them. The ship just completed transiting the Northwest Passage from Greenland and had missed getting provisions in Canada due to ice and they had run out of fresh fruit & vegetables and also, horrors of all horrors, red wine. We finally boarded the ship at 5pm, the original departure time, and provisions were still being loaded. The new supply of red wine showed up during dinner. We finally set sail at 9pm. Overnight we crossed the International Date Line and entered Russian waters and time zone. Our clocks were set ahead 20 hours which meant the time was 4 hours earlier but a day ahead. We went to sleep Monday night and awoke Wednesday morning. I'll start a new thread for Russia.