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player ready...Three strange-looking wooden sailing vessels, flying the flag of a country that no longer exists, have been stranded in a Seattle backwater for more than 100 days, their crews trying to rescue a historic adventure overtaken by history.
The three boats, each 55-feet-long and handmade of pine, sailed north from Vladivostok last June across the northern oceans. Their crews were attempting to recreate the voyage from Russia to Alaska made by the explorer Vitus Bering 250 years before.
The modern Russian sailors planned to sail down the American West Coast, then eastward around the world, taking the boats to all 152 countries that touch the sea.
”Peace and love without frontiers” is the expedition`s motto.
”Nobody has done it,” said expedition leader Michael Poboronchook. ”I want to do it.”
Poboronchook, 43, a former journalist who resembles a sea-going bear, has been working on the expedition for 10 years.
He eventually got backing from trade unions and other organizations and had three replicas of Bering`s boats-three-masted round-bottomed vessels with no keels-built near Karelia on the Gulf of Finland. He recruited crews, then shipped the boats by train 10,000 miles across the Soviet Union to the Pacific.
He named the vessels St. Peter, St. Paul and St. Gabriel, and launched them on the biggest Russian adventure since space exploration.
There were huge waves, thick fog, howling winds and icy rains, but no radar.
Their route from Petropavlosk, the last Russian port, to Dutch Harbor, the first American port, went along the southern edge of the Aleutian chain. The course is particularly difficult, especially for slow, heavy wooden boats built to an 18th Century design.
”Was it dangerous? Of course,” said Alexander Kharitonov, who went along.
Poboronchook said, ”We have a Russian philosophy. It is difficult to die only the first time.” He laughed. ”I go to sea because I want to die young.”
The world they left behind changed while they were adventuring. The Soviet Union collapsed, and so did their resources.
”We have 1.2 million rubles in our bank account, but it is worth nothing in this country,” Poboronchook said. ”It is in the bank, but it is only paper. In a couple of years, maybe a million rubles will be worth a dollar, maybe worth nothing at all. I don`t know.”
The three boats have Soviet diesel auxiliary engines, but the engines had immediate troubles, leaking oil, rattling and wheezing.
By October the boats had made Seattle, 5,500 miles from Vladivostok, but the engines gave up. ”The Soviet engines died with the Soviet Union,”
Poboronchook said.
The St. Peter, St. Paul and St. Gabriel got temporary berths on Lake Union, in Chandler`s Cove, near downtown Seattle, and local sailors came to their rescue.
The expedition got food, honorary membership in the Seattle Yacht Club, a computer, use of a fax machine, a cellular phone, invitations to dinner and promises that all would soon be well.
Poboronchook sent out letters and faxes looking for American corporate sponsorship. He wants new engines, or used ones, or money to get the vessels on the next leg of the trip from Seattle to San Francisco.
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Although there was much good will, there were no sponsors.
Poboronchook does not give up easily. His vessels continue to fly red hammer and sickle flags, even though the flags represent a country that has ceased to exist. He also flies the flag of czarist Russia, as Bering did.
”I want to see San Francisco,” Poboronchook said. ”Maybe March or April.”