17 minute read
Black Sea adventure
Before the curtain fell: Black Sea 1987
Rod Heikell recalls an adventurous trip across the Black Sea in an era when the USSR still existed, Margaret Thatcher was our leader and the Pet Shop Boys were number one
Our voyage in 1987 was in Rozinante, a Mirror Offshore 18 that is not the most agile sailing boat Van de Stadt designed.
The voyage down the Danube started in Regensburg in Germany and continued on downstream through the eastern bloc to Constanta on the
Black Sea. Being unable to get fuel in Romania the 200 mile passage to
Istanbul took four days under sail.
After a breather in Istanbul we sailed
Rozinante on through the Marmara
Sea to the Aegean and down to
Bodrum on the Turkish coast. This voyage was made before the were happy to be under way and things were going smoothly enough.
We took three hour watches so that the person off-watch had just three hours to get some sleep. This system had worked well enough before and both of us were soon into the rhythm of a longer passage that should take around 2½ days at this speed. I was back to dead reckoning to get us down to the Bosphorus and Istanbul with just a chart, our estimation of speed and the compass bearing.
That night we had a celebration dinner of fried rice with the few vegetables we had been able to find in Romania and some leftover tins from the saloon locker. The
Iron Curtain tore and the former satellites of the USSR broke free from their communist masters. 24th August: We departed after the Romanian officials arrived at midday - they had said they would be there by eight in the morning. We left with the warning that we must proceed straight out to sea until we were 10 miles off the coast before changing course for Bulgaria. We had a fair wind in the afternoon and through the night although the tubby little Rozinante was only making 3-4 knots under sail. She didn’t come equipped with a big genoa, just the main and the working jib in bright red plastic of some sort, but still we
ABOVE
Rozinante, Rod's trusty Mirror 18 Offshore
water tank was full and I produced a bottle of Bulgarian red that had been stowed for the occasion.
In a light-hearted moment after the wine was finished, I wrote a note saying who we were, where we were, and added my address in England for good measure before corking the bottle up and casting it over the side. Over a year later a letter arrived in the post with a Bulgarian stamp on it. A couple walking on the beach had found the bottle with a message in it, but then had to find someone to translate the note inside. ‘We are thinking of you in your little boat. If you come to Bulgaria please come to see us - you will be welcome’. It was a warming coda to the trip from Bulgaria. 25th August: Rozinante bounded on through the night and we had high hopes for a swift passage - well, as swift as you can be in a Mirror Offshore 18 which is really not that swift at all. By the afternoon of our second day at sea we were off Burgas, but as the wind was fair for Turkey, I decided not to enter Bulgaria and to continue on towards the Bosphorous. By the evening the wind had dropped and I was beginning to regret my rash decision. In Burgas I’m sure we could have found fuel and then we could fire up the outboard and make at least a couple of knots in the right direction instead of wallowing in the swell left over from the breeze.
As we sat in the cockpit after dinner I heard the low thrum of big diesels. In the hazy twilight it was difficult to make out the exact direction the noise was coming from. And then I spotted the grey outline of a large patrol boat idling along around half a mile off our port side. We sat there mesmerised while it passed and thanked our lucky stars that the patrol boat, likely Bulgarian, had not seen us. Then I heard the diesels approaching again and spotted the patrol boat coming back on a reciprocal course, but a bit closer to us. We watched it pass and then tried to catch the little wind that there was to get
ABOVE LEFT
The Romanian city of Constanta, Rozinante's departure point
ABOVE RIGHT
Rozinante under full sail - such as it was
BELOW
Moored up on the Danube us on our way. Fat chance. I’m pretty sure they must have located us somehow, but perhaps because we were so small and the mast so short, they couldn’t get a good radar echo off us. For another two hours the diesels growled around us in the dark before the patrol boat finally pottered off elsewhere. 26th August: We wallowed on towards the Bosphorous in a patchy breeze doing just a couple of knots when we were lucky. Still the dead reckoning plots were slowly dawdling towards the northern entrance to the Bosphorus.
In the afternoon we had a plague of flies that was like something out of the plagues in the Bible. Hundreds of little flies arrived on board, buzzing around everywhere. Fortunately, they were not ‘bitey’ flies, but they were annoying, settling all over the boat and down below as well. And then like some Biblical deliverance two visitors arrived on board. Two diminutive fly-catchers landed in the cockpit. They seemed to have come from Turkey and be headed towards the Danube delta. In no time at all they were snapping up the plague of flies with good appetite. I caught a couple of flies and held them between my
fingers for the flycatchers to take. There was just an imperceptible ‘pick’ as the birds plucked the flies from my fingers and then nimbly flew off to catch their own.
In the late afternoon one of the flycatchers departed, but the other seemed to have made himself at home. He sat on our hands, on my head, flew below and checked out the accommodation. By dusk the flies had gone, but our flycatcher was not done yet. He or she spied some giant moths migrating across the sea, moths that were almost as big as he/she is. Up the flycatcher went and then there was the most amazing dogfight as the moth jinked and dived to avoid the bird. For at least 10 minutes the dogfight went on like something out of World War II. Eventually the flycatcher wrestled the huge moth back to the boat and sat for a while getting its breath back while the moth flopped about in the cockpit. And then this diminutive bird started to eat this huge meal. And somehow finished it. How would it take off again? But an hour later it heaved itself off the deck and set off towards the Danube delta.
The whole show cheered us up no end and our slow progress under sail was all but forgotten. We were still headed in the right direction and we still had food and water. 27th August: My birthday. For my 38th year I decided we could postpone celebrations until we got to Istanbul since we had no alcohol left on board and we were down to eating tinned and dry goods. Not that I was complaining. Romania was hardly a place to buy the makings of a birthday feast.
I knew we were getting closer to the Bosphorous as the amount of shipping coming and going had increased and we needed to keep a good lookout by day and night. There were fishing boats around as well, mostly the big Black Sea trawlers with top-heavy superstructures that often changed course to take a look at us. I was tempted to ask one of them for some fuel but having come this far with just a dribble left in the tank I figured we could make it OK.
ABOVE
Two views of the entrance to the Bosphorous
BELOW
The waterfront at Istanbul was a most welcome sight
OPPOSITE
Istanbul in all its glory
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rod Heikell is a noted sailor and author of innumerable pilot guides covering the Seven Seas. By the Edge of the Sea is a collection of writings about the Mediterranean. Go to taniwhapress. com to order a copy
28th August: Around midday I was confident that we were near the entrance to the Bosphorous. I’d been pretty blasé on the surface about my dead reckoning for the trip from Constanta, but for the last night and all of today I’d had niggling doubts about it after four days at sea. I did use the trick of old and made my dead reckoning course slightly west of the entrance so that when I sight land, I'd know I need to turn left a bit to find the entrance to the Bosphorous. There were tons, literally thousands of tons, of shipping around and a lot of local traffic as well. Once into the entrance I had just enough fuel left to crank the diesel up and get us into the Bosphorous against a rising head-wind. Something over halfway down the Boshorus is Bebek, a bight in the coast full of local yachts that wouldn’t normally have a place for an average sized yacht. In Rozinante I squeezed into a gap and moored up. The local ‘fixer’ came down to protest, but when I told him we had just come from Romania he took a long look at me, at Rozinante, at the sky, and then shook his head telling me it is ‘no problem’. Thank you, God, whoever you are, because I didn’t have any diesel left.
After Romania, Istanbul seemed like paradise, a land of plenty where you could buy food in the shops and dine on dishes in the restaurants that were unimaginable in Romania. On the day after we arrived I found my partner Bridget had bought four loaves of bread during the day, a reflex action after Romania she said, in case it wasn’t available tomorrow. We luxuriated in the comfort of this old city and both of us had a certain glow of pride at getting there in one piece.
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