While we were admiring the view of the lighthouse, a light east breeze blew. We put on a spinnaker and decided to relax a little.

But they didn't. Half an hour later the wind increased to 4-5 m/s and went to the south, i.e. in gulffind. I had to bring down the back, put the mainsail with the staysail and put on costumes. Because it got really cold. And half an hour later it was already blowing from the west, i.e. straight into the face 9-10 m/s. By this time we have already reached the fairway. Reduced staysail, took one reef. A couple of hours tacked along the fairway. The wave quickly rose above a meter. For assolka, tacking in such conditions is an almost useless waste of time and effort, and even more rain. On the next left tack, we went to hide in the South Bugscue estuary. After a couple of hours we anchored under the high bank of Olbia. At 16-00, it's time to think about breakfast (at the same time lunch and dinner) :)

While they cooked, ate, washed the dishes - the wind was already blowing from the north. Our shelter no longer saved us, but it became possible to continue the journey along the Dnieper estuary. As soon as we leaned out over the Adzhigolsky cape (to Ochakovo another 10 m.m.), we were called by "Swan 91". They told us who we are and where we are going. More "birds" did not touch us. At sunset, the sun came out briefly. Sunset in Ochakovo. At 22-20 we moored at the "Gidrouzel" at the southern pier. Checked out at the border guards and fell asleep.

It has been raining heavily all morning in Ochakovo. We are sitting (lying) in the cabin. It would be necessary to go to the administrative building and solve the issues of withdrawal, but there is no desire to get out into the street. Even if we assume that the commission will take place and we will be released - where to go in such weather? Also hungry ... Yes, I did not explain, the galley on the "Chung" is located in the right afterpeak. Even when you set up an awning, the galley remains open - the boom is not long enough :( So we sit angry and hungry. It cleared up only after lunch and I went to solve organizational issues.children - understandable, but at least leave tomorrow morning

Explanation. The port "Gidrouzel Ochakov" is located a few kilometers from the city of Ochakov. In the "Gidrouzel" itself, there is only a duty border guard who draws up cabotage. For registration of foreign voyages, it is necessary to call the border guards from the frontier post, and there are no customs offices not only in the "Gidrouzle", but in general in Ochakovo. They should be called from Nikolaev.

On the bulletin board near the watchman there is a list of telephones, including telephones for calling the Ochakov border guards and the Nikolaev customs officers. According to the information I have, representatives of the sanitation station and the environmental service are also needed to create a commission. There are no phone numbers for these services on the board. The watchman doesn't know anything (or pretends to), but he knows the number of the agent who can help with the clearance :) . Actually, back at home, I prepared all the necessary documents (according to the information that I had) in order to get registered without an agent, but there are severalko was confused, still the first time. I'm calling the agent. I hear a sweet female voice: “It’s no problem to arrange a departure for tomorrow. It’s possible today, but it will cost other money ... In general, do you know that our services are paid?” "I know." "And how much are you willing to pay?" "According to my information, this service costs $100" "You were deceived. If you agree to a commission tomorrow, then $200, and if you want today, it will be more." Well, what can I say? Of course, I feel sorry for $200, but I also really want to leave without problems and as soon as possible. What if I did something wrong? They will return the documents, they will leave - we will not lose yetknow how many days. Or do you still have to pay directly? So it's better to make sure. In short, I agree. Call in half an hour. "The commission is scheduled for tomorrow at 9:00, and we will meet at 8:30." Then the sun came out, the mood improved, and Yura and I went to the city. If you go not along the serpentine, but climb straight up along the path, then it takes about 10 minutes to the Ochakov-Nikolaev highway. There you can walk along the highway to the ring, where refueling is another ten minutes. Or you can take the city bus. Stocked up with gasoline, vodka, bread, canned foodami. We returned by bus.

Even before leaving the house, I was approached by a forum colleague Oleg_Martin - a resident of Ochakovo, he left me his phone number and invited me to visit. Called and made an appointment. In the meantime, I started preparing documents for tomorrow, and Yura armed himself with a fishing rod and went to the pier. A couple of hours later Yura returned with a bucket of gobies. Here Oleg drove up. Eh, cold vodka, but under fried fresh gobies! In short, a warm friendly conversation dragged on past midnight. We had a good time :) The only pity is that they forgot about the camera in the hustle and bustle.

The morning began with a phone call, I was confronted with the fact that the commission was postponed to 11 o'clock. Apparently, even $200 is not enough to avoid missed deadlines :( At 10-30 I went to meet with the agent. What a pleasant surprise! The agent turned out to be “an athlete, a Komsomol member and, finally, just a beauty” :) In general, she is very young and pretty a girl with a fabulous name Alenka. But, despite this, she knows her business well. On the second floor of the administrative building, she has her own office, stuffed with office equipment. If I didn't prepare at all, but just comel with a standard set of ship documents, then in half an hour everything would be in openwork. And since I spent an indecent amount of time on preparation, she only had to check what I had created. She was surprised by this preparation and admitted that I could do without her services. And to the fact that I did not know where to find ecologists and a sanitation station, she replied that their presence was not required.

At 11-00 we were already standing at the western wall. 5 people approached the boat - two border guards, two customs officers and Alenka. One of the border guards is a rather large woman. Looking at our boat, she said: “I didn’t understand, but where is the sailboat?” “So here it is” “And what do you want on this at sea? Is it possible?" I show the act of maintenance - this issue has been removed, but a second one immediately arose. “It says here that the maximum number of people on board is 4 people. How are we going to conduct the commission? After a short meeting, we decided that one border guard and one customs officer would go on board.Nick and Alenka. Yuri and I can no longer go ashore. "Can it handle five?" I just laugh. Inspection and verification of documents took about fifteen minutes. Alyonka quickly answered all questions instead of me. There was only one hitch. They asked me to show the ship's log. Of course I have it. I run it regularly. But since the day before yesterday, i.e. when they came to Ochakov, I did not write down anything there. A careful study of the magazine begins - the pages are numbered, the magazine is stitched, sealed. Start looking at records. “Well, you provided us with a certificate,that the crew on the sailboat carried out a self-examination, but you do not have such an entry in the log! This means that the self-examination was not carried out and the certificate is false! But then Alenka intervened and the incident was hushed up. Well, for four years I have been diligently keeping a journal and no one, except me, has looked into it and was not interested in its contents. Visited for the first time and I screwed up :(

11-45 we leave the "Hydroelectric". Alenka coquettishly waves her hand. Eh, "where are my 17 years?" – would have talked to come with us :) 12-40 We go out to sea. Sunny, wind 2-3 m/s, almost no waves. We set up a genoa and a full grotto. One trouble - the wind blows from the direction of 190, and our course to Cape Kaliakra is 215. That is. tacking. Our course turns out to be 235. I don’t see much point in making short tacks, so we decided to go until we see the shore. By night we will be against the Belgorod-Dnestrovsky estuary, and there we will make a turn. They turned on the music: “In the filibuster far blue sea, the brigantine raises sails. The beauty :)

However, by 14 o'clock it inflates to 4-5 m/s. Change genoa to staysail. Another hour the first reef, then another. By 18-00 we go under a storm staysail and two reefs. There is nothing to reduce further. The wave is already blowing 8-10 more than a meter. The wave is not usual, it throws very hard, we sit wet from the splashes. By 19 o'clock the shore appeared. Too early. Slightly to the right of the course I distinguish high houses. I think that there are no such people in Belgorod. I take a GPS-ku and climb into the cabin. Oh, and it turns out to be a fun task to put an end to the map in such conditions. After several minutes of torment, I guessed to rest my back on the sawers, and feet on the side. The point has been set. Alas, before us is not Belgorod, but Odessa. We have a strong drift, it just throws the wave into the wind, it turns out the actual course is 250. We will go to the coast a little south of Odessa. By 20:00 the wind increased to 10-12 m/s and began to retreat to the south. The wave covers the horizon, which means at least 1.5 m. In such conditions, make a turn and go to sea for the night? I don't think this is reasonable. Even if the wind does not increase any more, and we hold out steadfastly through the night, then by morning we will actually have passed more than 70 m.m., we will advance no more on the general coursethan by 25. And if the upward trend continues?

Here a colleague complained that there were no colorful descriptions of difficulties and hardships. So, they are not and will not be, because we went to rest, and not to show "miracles of heroism." In this situation, as in subsequent similar ones, I make decisions in favor of security, and not false "heroism". I understand that for a ton-class sailboat this is quite normal weather, but for an ash-oil it is already cool. Therefore, we leave and go to the Odessa Bay, wait until the morning.

Making such a decision, I understand that our border is closed and we need to coordinate our actions with the border guards, otherwise the trip will end without really starting. 10 miles - I call "swans" - silence in response. 2 miles - silence. We enter the bay. I start inventing everything I can do: "Swan 111", "Swan 91", "Odessa port control", "Odessa traffic control", "Harbor master of Odessa" - without result. How to act in such a situation, to be honest, is still not clear to me. Who knows - share your experience. We did this - we crossed the zone designated as an anchorI parked and went beyond it a little further towards the coast. Where the depth decreases from 10 to 5 meters, we anchored. Tried to get in touch again. Suddenly I hear in response: “Chunga-Changa - is that you? Here Ochakov traffic control”, “Well, are you safe there, alive? And then we lost you. We are looking all over the coast from Ochakov to Yuzhny, is the weather fresh, do you have problems?”, “No problems, we took refuge in the Odessa Bay, we want to agree on a parking spot”, “Well, I won’t help you here - not my area. But that they got to Odessa - well done. Good luck. End of connection."

In one of the topics I read that our border guards are bastards. Once again I am convinced that we have a bastard system, and people - they are people. For "Swan" from the tower, we are not an object of possible money-grubbing and he has a completely different attitude towards us than those who let us in and out :(

After that we calmed down and tried to go to sleep. But it wasn't that easy. Odessa Bay turned out to be a very relative refuge. We were protected from the wind, but the wave, smoothly bending around the cape, easily went inside. It did not have sharp collapsing peaks, but in height it was no less than in the sea. We just flew inside the cabin, we had to hold on to something all the time, what kind of sleep was there. Here I appreciated the merits of my "coffins". Due to the fact that I have made fences from the side and from the cockpit space, it turns out that it is possiblehaving turned in a cunning pose, bursting with his feet, knees, back, elbows and thus fixing his position relative to the boat. In a standard assolka, such a focus will not work. We are not talking about sound healthy sleep here, but you can take a short nap. The wave began to subside after dawn. This is where we switched off. Woke up only at the beginning of the tenth. We quickly took a sip of tea and hurried to leave the bay. We look, sailboats come out from under the Vorontsovsky lighthouse. At first we couldn't see where they were going. But when we came out of the bay we saw moreIt is a cluster of sailboats in the area of Cape Lanzheron. Most likely, this was just the beginning of the World Cup Ports Cup regatta, in which we used to want to take part. When we started, we were about a mile inland and half a mile astern of the starting line. The wind was southerly (4-5 m/s) and the racers began to move along the coast in short tacks. We could lay a long tack and go to sea, but then sports passion took over. We also began to maneuver on short tacks in a parallel course, only further from the coast. In the area of Cape Big Fountain, aboutthey did not go around the first sign and went out to sea. The second sign was not visible, but the leaders of the race were visible, who, having rounded the sign, raised spinnakers. By the time we crossed the line connecting the first and second mark, the last two boats were less than half a mile to our left. It is difficult to say what kind of sailboats they are, it looks like Ricochets. But if we took official part, then we obviously had rivals to fight. Here's how it came out. At first we wanted to get to this race, then we changed our minds, but we got there anyway. And even acceptede absentee participation :) Of course, we did not turn to their sign, but simply continued to tack further along the coast.

Gradually the wind died down to 2-3 m/s, but the wave remained. The sails squelch, there is almost no progress. It rains periodically. By sunset we reached the Dniester estuary. Those. we reached the planned turning point, but only a day later than we wanted. The entrance to the estuary is blocked by a bridge of a very interesting design. One of its spans descends and rises like an elevator platform. It was a pity it was far away, I couldn’t take a picture, you can’t use the zoom on such a bumpy.

The sails do not work, the night is approaching, we start the engine and head for Snake Island.

There was thick fog all night and morning. At dawn, a group of dolphins approached us.

Serpentine emerged from the mist when it was a little more than a mile away.

There are two piers on the north side of the island. One for large ships, the second for small ones. Since no one answers our calls on the radio again, we approach the small pier, but we do not moor, but spin around. A border guard came down to us from the mountain. It turned out that they were listening to the 14th channel, not the 16th. Why, I never understood. We explain that we didn’t sleep for two nights and ate almost nothing, we want to rest. Since our border is closed, they don’t let us ashore, but anchoring near the island is no problem.

It is a pity that there is no gas station on the island, but there is a mobile connection. Called home, fully refreshed. By 2 pm the fog cleared, the sun came out, but it was still cold. Photo of Snake Island.

Military unit on the island. Only 15 people live there. 12 border guards and 3 civilians - lighthouse workers.

The day flew by quickly. Sunset on Serpentine. Woke up before dawn from a chatter. The wind changed to the northeast and the island no longer covered us. But there was a wonderful opportunity to continue the journey. We quickly swallow coffee, put the spinnaker and go. Too bad our joy didn't last long. By 10 o'clock the wind died down. Complete calm. During the day and the next night, the calm was replaced by short periods with a light south-westerly wind. Those. either we stand, or we weakly maneuver. Forward advance per day is less than 30 m.m. Around the water. Nothing to photographto say - in general, also nothing. One joy is a sound sleep and no problems with cooking :)

The next day is July 9th. The wind blew up to 5m/s. The direction, of course, is southwest, but we are already happy with that. Despite the tacking, more than 60 m.m. passed during the day. Even at home, our local "experts" warned us that it was impossible to approach the coast of Romania - the Ukrainian flag was not carried there (in practice, I had a completely different idea). Therefore, when laying the tack, we try to be closer than 20 m.m. do not approach the shore. But there is one place with oil rigs, and the farthest one protrudes strongly into the sea. If you try to get around it at a position position12 pm, then we will lose another day. Therefore, they "risked" and decided to "break through" between the two extreme towers. Oddly enough, no one shot us for this;)

Another sunset. Somewhere over the horizon Romania. Just after sunset, the calm began again.

Navigator's place

View towards the cockpit

All day on July 10, almost complete calm, we moved less than 10 m.m. Benne drove off :( For a change, Yura photographs the interior (there is nothing outside anyway except the endless sea). These are our food supplies, there are 4 such compartments in total.

Finally we waited. At dawn on July 12, the northeast blew. It blew well 5-6 m / s. Put on a spinnaker and enjoy life. We ran 42 m.m. in 8 hours. For assolka - a great result. On the horizon, to the right along the course, Cape Kaliakra is visible. We were faced with a choice - to enter Bulgaria or go further. On the one hand, we are running out of water and gasoline, and 90 m.m. to Igneada. In such weather, as it has been lately, it can stretch for three days, or even more. On the other hand, we do not know where to go to solve our problems, and besides, we haveno visas. It would be a shame to make a detour at 30-40 nm. and be left with nothing. We decided to come closer to the cape, maybe the border guards could tell us something. We turn to the west, go to the cape. In an hour the wind subsides, in another hour it blows 0.5-1 m/s. The section of the coast from Cape Shabla to Cape Kaliakra was clearly visible and for some reason we relaxed, the exact coordinates were not put on the map. At about 18 o'clock I look at the shore, and I am tormented by suspicions: we passed the point where we are now three hours ago! Spinnaker, though squelching on the wave, but works. Behind the stern, a light wakee. GPS shows 0.5-0.6 knots. I put a point on the map, after 10 minutes another one. So it is, we are moving stern forward! :( However, the current is not weak there! At this moment, we hear how the Bulgarian border guards call for two sailing sailboats heading for Cape Kaliakra. Yeah, a sailing sailboat under the motor is really moving right under the shore, and the second one is apparently us. From that sailboat they answer: " Sailing trimaran "Happy day", flag of Slovenia, follows from Constanta to Balchik".eat. Hearing that the flag is Ukraine, the Bulgarians immediately switch to Russian. "Let's go to Istanbul, we want to go to Balchik to replenish the supply of water and gasoline" "Welcome!" Inspired by this turn of events, we bring down the spinnaker, start the engine and follow the trimaran. Pictured is Cape Kalikar.

The shores of Bulgaria are very beautiful during the day, but when the coast lights come on after sunset, the view is simply fabulous. It's a pity that the photos don't convey that feeling at all, but you can't describe it in words. At 23-30 we reached the point of entry into the port. No one answers our call on channel 16. We go to where "customs" is indicated on the map. We twirled a little - a duty customs officer appeared on the pier. Showed me where to go. He speaks Russian well. After listening to our problems and desires, he offered to moor to a small pier near his trailer. Formalities with verification dThe documents took half an hour. Then he explained that since we do not have visas, we cannot go ashore, but he can help us. Usually in such cases, a taxi is called, and the person goes to the gas station together with the border guards. Of course, we are quite satisfied with this. The border guards arrived and began to inspect the sailboat, when they saw the name they were simply delighted (apparently they know our cartoons). They say: "Take the money, canisters, sit down, let's go." And now, instead of a taxi, they take me to the gas station in a service jeep :) We had euros and dollars on the sailboat, for some reason, I took only dollars with mes. Alas, at the gas station they refuse such money. The same thing happened on the second and third. Then one of the escorts offered to go to his house for money. He changed my dollars for levs. Then we went back to the gas station and bought gasoline. Traveled with me for about an hour. On the way back, they also drove us through the city center to show the sights. Just beautiful, sweet, good-natured people - what else can I say. Of course, as soon as we returned to the port, I presented them with a bottle of my favorite Khortytsya. The guys were happy. On the whiteWe have at our disposal a very civilized bathroom with a shower and drinking water. In addition, the customs officer said that we do not need to go to sea at night, we can stand near it until dawn. Then we believed - Bulgaria is super! :) Sunset over Balchik