Our mast goes up
Tainui’s mast was lifted off the deck and swung across to cradles ashore both gently and efficiently by Ivan. This lovely bloke knows boats, cranes and the petty worries of a tired and elderly sailor.…
Tainui’s mast was lifted off the deck and swung across to cradles ashore both gently and efficiently by Ivan. This lovely bloke knows boats, cranes and the petty worries of a tired and elderly sailor.…
Our departure from Rostov was interrupted for an hour while Maxine and I dived over the side and groped in chilly water with the propeller, which had become fouled by a mooring line. In the…
After her beery farewell at Rostov’s Library Restaurant (much recommended), Jen has flown off to Jordan for her next adventure. How sad to see her go. Back on board Tainui we have done nothing but…
A rich sunrise this morning gave the Don a Monet look. Now a blustery west wind is bringing squalls up river. We arrived in Rostov-on-Don at 6 last night. Another milestone in Tainui’s journey. Here…
There have been ugly rumours of violence on Tainui. These are without foundation. True, Maxine has been hideously scarred by an unfortunate sequence of nasty accidents – I repeat, accidents. Her bruised body looks like…
Today is Fathers’ Day and my present was the best low calorie cake known to father. My candles were Belomor Gulag cigarettes. I believe I was the only father in the entire world with this…
Our consensus view is that the Don is the most beautiful of rivers. Quiet and tortuous, lined with deciduous forest, it encourages languid silence on board. I am sure it has been doing so for…
Like all of the reservoirs, Tsimlyansk is an imposing body of water. A wonderful place to sail, if you had a mast. But if there is any breeze, motoring in shallow waters with steep chop…
Management of the constant stream of commercial shipping on the inland waterways is a complex choreography, run with calm efficiency by the lock keepers and dispatchers. Larger vessels need to be locked one at…
Chris wrote to me expressing the hope that my crew would instill in me some much needed feminine sensibility. Now, after 3 days of constant bullying, the girls have managed to discover the warm, sensitive…
As I have said, the Voga-Don Canal is a busy commercial waterway. But we have found the lock-keepers helpful, friendly and efficient. We squeeze past huge tankers, bulk carriers and barges with sometimes only metres…
From our Volgograd berth we sped 35 km down the Volga in warm sunshine with 2.5 knots of favourable current. The beginning of the great Volga-Don Canal, marked as it is by an imposing statue…
This grand memorial to 1.4 million wasted lives looms over the factories lining 40 km of Volgograd waterfront. Standing in silhouette against the sunset Mother Russia is theatrical, overstated, profound and deeply moving. We walked…
It is no coincidence that today is the anniversary of the completion of the Gutenberg Bible. While our Volga prose is perhaps less earth-shattering and not quite complete yet, it nearly is. And the end…
Tainui is not looking her best. There is no doubt about that. In Baltic ports like Christiansand and Kiel she would stand out a bit beside those rows upon rows of pristine Eurovision Song Contest…
Our arrival in Volzshkiy is something of a milestone in Tainui’s journey. It is the end of a long trip down the 500 km long Volgogradskiy Reservoir and almost the end of our Volga journey.…
At 10 am this morning, just outside the entrance, we were chased down by a GIMS runabout with flashing blue light and siren. GIMS is the Volga version of…
Our anchorage at Galka was free of march flies and mosquitoes. When we got in at midnight last night we rejoiced. But this morning Tainui was besieged by buzzing bees. Utterly harmless of course, but…
One of the more testing jobs I have each day is choosing the title for the web post. In the Southern Ocean, where noteworthiness was at a premium, I was scraping the bottom of the…
A couple of days ago we passed Marx and are now tucked into a little marina at Engels, opposite Saratov. Like many other places we have been, this is an old commercial ship basin, slowly…
This is not about the effects of old age on a bloke’s physiognomy but advice to readers about a wonderful opportunity to make money in Russia. I had not realised the devastating impact of perestrioka…
A warm, sunny and clean day. After coffee and a swim, a warm, clean and sunny skipper also. Now for an omlette with beans. At midnight last night…
Gerda and Dima have been with us since Nizhniy Novgorod and they are excellent companions. Maxine complains intermittently of what she calls Volga Fatigue (really, I think she is just missing her man) but is…
We have been sailing in loose company with Tsetsarevitch, a little home-built yacht from Perm (spelled Perm’). Perm is in Siberia about 1,000 miles up the Kama River, northeast from Kazan. Konstantin Timoynin, Captain of…
…or so Samara was called in the 18th century. The first performance of Shostakovitch’s 7th symphony took place in Samara and Yuri Gargagarin recuperated here after he landed his space craft just up the road.…
We tied up at a snug little marina in Samara late last night after a splendid trip down river to the Big Bend. The Volga is narrow here, with high green hills on both sides.…
Like every arrival, this one has come as a complete surprise to us. A power boat was waiting off the yacht club to guide us in, and many willing hands pulled eagerly but unpredictably on…
Non-sailors might like to know how we manage the physically exhausting business of Volga travel in Tainui. These pictures were taken in gale force conditions (not) on Kuybishevskiy Reservoir on approach to Tolyatti. …
I have inserted the Repin image at Lieve’s request. And the two pictures below I uplifted from Sasha’ s superb book of old Volga postcards. How times have changed since then. Today’s Volga boatmen drive huge double barges…
True, Lenin was born here, but today Tainui is the big news. Do not miss Ulyanov’sk Prime Time TV tonight. We have had film crews on board all morning and Tainui will be the talk of the…
Last night’s anchorage was a deserted wooded bay at Staraya Mayna. Unlike yesterday’s squally passage, today we have weather which is warm and calm. Maxine is having another bad hair day. Her main problem this…
Departure from Kazan was difficult. Partly because our dockside farewells were protracted, and partly because we had to wait an hour while a mafioso gin palace refueled before we could top up our tanks…
This post is not about Russia, but I need to express my frustration with a crew issue. As we passed the diversion north to Bolgar, whose minarets were just visible through the rain, a fine…
Kazan, largest port on the river system, sits at the confluence of the Volga and Kama Rivers, which ends its thousand mile journey from Siberia here. Protecting these vital trade routes, Kazan has always been…
The domes of the monastery shone in the dawn sunlight with a full moon and mist on the water adding needless extra theatre. At 9 we moved alongside to meet our friends from Credo, a…
Yesterday was long and tiring, with rain and squalls. The first bleak weather we have had since Belomorsk Canal. This morning I got up at 5 to watch sunrise over the monastery. Tainui is anchored…
The Volga follows a fairly narrow and serpiginous course from Nizhniy Novgorod with high forested shores. But today the scene has changed. We are now passing through a series of lakes and reservoirs with wide…
Astute followers of our Yellowbrick track may have noticed some interesting movement of Tainui this morning. I have been stressing to Lieve and Maxine the importance of fastidious recording of our position as we pass…
5 am and an impossibly beautiful sunrise over glassy water. Alone in the cockpit with my first morning coffee I have been thinking about the enormity of this voyage. We are approaching Kazan, meeting place of Orthodox and…
Back from Moscow to ready the boat for the next bit, I needed to refuel. I asked Dima, working on an adjacent boat, if he could call me a taxi for the tedious jerrycan transfer…
Pasha’s dacha In Moscow we farewelled Dirk, who has fled to the emerald isle. He will be missed. Our Moscow sojourn gave us a wonderful opportunity to catch up with Pasha and to meet his…
…I mean Tainui, not Maxine. Without sentimentality I must say that Tainui has served us well indeed. As usual, she has never given me a moment’s anxiety, although she cannot say the same of me.…
We passed through the open road bridge at 6 am. Old Gorky lay ahead, looking pretty wonderful, I must say. In the mist, at the junction of the Volga and Oka Rivers, a bold fortress…
Having passed through the grand downhill locks at Gorodets we were met with a surprise – a 2-3 knot favourable current in the Volga. The 35 mile trip to Nizhniy took no time at all…
Thunderheads loomed over us when, in fading light, we crept into a likely looking inlet for the night. Black night was upon us when we realised that the second set of channel markers was missing…
Today is a day of national celebration for all mariners on Russia’s inland waterways. Maxine tells me that VHF communication in Cyrillic between commercial shipping includes fraternal greetings and expressions of goodwill. Near Kineshma we…
Just before Kineshma we passed Plyos, famed outdoor artists’ centre. We couldn’t find anywhere to stop, so that visit will have to wait for our next Volga transit. I had a lovely…
The marina at Kostroma is small, jet ski infested but friendly. We were welcomed warmly by Andrey and Anna, who had brought ice creams and 2 bottles of splendid isabella and raspberry wine. We settled…
We left Yaroslavl at about 8pm. The evening is warm, calm. The river is almost a mile wide and is a serious waterway. We have a steady 1 knot current with us. Pleasing because we…