Okhotsk's inhabitants describe the winter of 1726-27 as the worst they can recall; Bering has seized flour from the local villagers to ensure that his party too can take advantage of their stocks; consequently the whole village had soon faced the threat of starvation.

The explorer will later report how it was only the arrival of an advance party of Chirikov's division in June with twenty-seven tons of flour that ensured his party (by then diminished in numbers) could be fed.

The Vostok is readied and the Fortuna built at a rapid pace, with the first party (forty-eight men commanded by Shpangberg and comprising those required to start work on the ships that will have to be built in Kamchatka itself as soon as possible) leaving in June 1727.

Chirikov himself arrives in Okhotsk soon after, bringing further supplies of food.

He had had a relatively easy trip, losing none of his men and only seventeen of the one hundred and forty horses with which he had set out.