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| Arriving into Yalta |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Three Pretty Ladies |
