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Notification

November 2020: Shamal and her Crew have arrived safely back into Opua, Bay of Islands, New Zealand completing their circumnavigation a year ago. Due to Covid-19 and New Zealand's Boarders being closed, they will continue to spend their 2020/21 Summer exploring some of New Zealand's waters. Thanks to all of you for following our Adventures. There will be more.

24 October 2013

The Ukraine


Arriving into Yalta



The Crimea Peninsula

 


Hello Again

 

We sat in Samsun waiting for the winds to change to leave for our sail back along the coast of Turkey to Sinop.  The winds were light and variable and the seas rolly with white caps.  This seems to be the norm in the Black Sea, so we decided on a 06.00a.m. start for the 87nm run.  With some tacking, then some motor sailing ( wind and current against us ) we arrived back in Sinop just after midnight.  We anchored outside the fishing harbour as there was no room inside.  Not that we would have entered at that time of night anyway. The following day we took the tender ashore for supply shopping, coffee and to download the weather.  Not sure if the latter will really help as we have found with the three different forecasts we use, they invariably are totally different, and, so is the actual weather from what is reported anyway.  Never mind, we need some guide lines for the trip.  We then proceeded with our check out formalities from Turkey.  Once that was done it was back to SHAMAL for an early night as we will leave on daybreak the following morning.  We are now crossing to Yalta on the south eastern coast of the Crimea – Ukraine.


Fancy Dress Anyone

You may be asking why on earth would anyone want to visit the Ukraine ?  We came into the Black Sea as it is “off the beaten track”. As you will have noticed we like to visit these out of the way places, and the Black Sea is described as one of the most isolated of all the world’s great bodies of water.  We had been forewarned about the challenges of dealing with former communist bureaucracies, but we were up for the challenge.  Also Russia is still closed to cruising yachts on its Black Sea ports, and we felt its boarding countries that were part of the old Soviet Union would give us a taste of what life is like in this corner of the planet.

 

Three Pretty Ladies
Ukraine – population of 45 million.  It is the largest European country.  It still has strong ties with Russia with ethnic Russians making up 17% of the population, and Russian being spoken widely.  We still could not tell the difference between Russian and the Ukraine language.  One thing that still intrigues us is that to visit countries like this one needs a ‘letter of invitation’ to get a visa.  In our case it was our yacht agent in Yalta who wrote it out for us.  Never met the man before!!!!!