After about 1,200 miles of jet skiing on river and sea, Charles Peterson completed a journey from Nenana to Nome on Friday. The trip took about six days and included stops in numerous villages along the way.
Peterson pulled into Belmont Point on his Sea-Doo jet ski around 2:30 p.m. A small crowd cheered from their vehicles and along the sandy shore.
“I wasn't really expecting this. Thank you guys for showing up,” Peterson said. “It was an awesome journey. I had a fun time, met a lot of really neat, nice people all the way down.”
Peterson said he had too much adrenaline to think about what inspired the journey. His wife, Jana Schuerch, said there really wasn’t much to the story.
“He just said he just wants to go on a trip. He wants to jet ski from Nenana to Nome,” Jana Schuerch said. “At first I was like, ‘eh, maybe not’ and then he was like, ‘but I'm gonna do it’.”
It took Peterson about four days to navigate the mighty, winding Yukon River. He dodged driftwood and other debris floating out toward the Bering Sea. He then hugged the Norton Sound coastline and started his final day in Golovin. He said sticks floating along the coastline posed problems.
“A lot of those sticks get stuck up into the jet. There's a button you got to push, and it puts the motor in reverse and kicks the sticks out,” Peterson said. “Only one time it didn't really work, and that was between St. Michael and Unalakleet, and I thought I was going to have to go swimming there for a minute.”
Family and friends kept tabs on the ride through daily check-ins Peterson shared on Facebook Live. His daughter, Kaya Schuerch, said the live streams put her mind at ease.
“I was worried at the start, but after the first day I knew he could do it,” Kaya Schuerch said.
Peterson grew up in Nome and lived in Kiana for about 10 years before moving back to Nome. There, he developed his outdoors skills with help from Jana Schuerch’s father, Lorry Schuerch. She said that shared knowledge showed up during the trip when Peterson encountered choppy water.
“I told him, ‘remember what my Dad taught you, you know what you're doing. If you're ever in doubt, you hug the shore and then pull over,” Jana Schuerch said. “The next day he went live and he goes, ‘yeah, thank you to Lorry Schuerch for teaching me well’.”
Peterson said a highlight of the trip was the support he received from villages along the way, including a fresh pair of insulated gloves from Tony Haugen in Unalakleet and cheers from children. He said the list of people to thank is long, and a comprehensive one will be shared on his Facebook page.
“Really neat to see all the kids really excited in the villages. There's a lot of questions on what I was doing, and why. I didn't really have an answer to that. I just wanted to do it,” he said.
Tommy Stasenko, a friend and crabber, advised Peterson to make it into Nome Friday, before he expected winds to pick up. The Friday finale also meant the family would be together for the Midnight Sun parade scheduled for 11 a.m. Saturday. Jana Schuerch said they plan to be there, then tow the jet ski out to Salmon Lake afterwards for one more ride.
