Okhotsk is ill-suited to be a permanent port, but things are little better for the second Bering expedition than they had been at Yakutsk; the expedition’s administrator, Grigory Skornyakov-Pisarev, despite having been resident here for four years, has been slow to construct the buildings needed.

Bering’s lieutenant and fellow Dane Martin Shpanberg is, however, able to ready the ships the expedition needed.

The Gabriel has been refitted by the end of 1737; in addition, two new ships, the Archangel Michael and the Nadezhda, have been constructed and are rapidly readied for a voyage to Japan, a country with which Russia has never had contact.

Bering in the same year takes up residence in Okhotsk.

It is the fifth year of the expedition, and the original cost estimates now look naive compared to the true costs of the trip.

The additional costs (three hundred thousand rubles compared to the twelve thousand that had been budgeted) bring poverty to the entire region.