A source

We have one crossing left to Sevastopol, where our journey will end this season. In the meantime, we are in Yalta, and we are going to have a little rest)

Due to the fact that the port is guarded, we, for the first time since Rostov-on-Don, were able to go ashore with the whole team. And we went to look at the evening Yalta, as well as sit in some restaurant.

We walked along the embankment past the moored sailboats, but we had to quickly leave this place, because Fenya tried to jump into every boat))

Panorama of the center of Yalta

And then we delved into the narrow streets to find a place where we could eat.

Found. We sat. Have a rest.

Some of them even had a great rest)) And yet, even here they could not do without calls to the border guards. The fact is that now we have to fill out an application to leave the port of Yalta and go to Sevastopol. We need to call the outpost ourselves and again tell the border guards about ourselves and the boat)))) We got through. They told.

On the morning of July 4, at 5:20 we left Yalta.

Yesterday the weather forecast was not bad, but the sky is not very good. Today's forecast is a little worse, but still nothing)

But beautiful! The wave, however, shakes the boat more than usual.

And the farther we go, the more unpleasant the wave becomes.

We heard talks on channel 16: two barges in the Bosporus region need help and some kind of lifeguard is coming to them, the wave is about 4 m high there. But the Bosphorus is far away.

It's only morning and I'm already tired. Apparently the effect is that I already feel the approach of the end point of the journey, and I can’t concentrate.

And we have already passed the Swallow's Nest, and caught up with Cape Ai-Todor. At the cape, we contacted the border guards, apparently, the territory of the next outpost begins here. We lay down on course 230 to bypass the next restricted area. If they're not right, these zones, because of them, we will have to detour an extra 20 miles ...

Now the wind and the wave are almost favorable, but the wind is weak and we are pretty shaken. Waves catch up with the boat, raise the stern, and swept under the bottom, move to the west. It would be nice to keep heading for that distant cape on the horizon, so we would cut off the path, and the wave would not rock the boat so much, but it’s impossible))) At 9:20 I gave the tiller to Sasha and went to bed

Rested for a while. At 10:40, when we passed Cape Sarych, the wave began to increase. I had hoped that as we turned to the north conditions would become more comfortable, but just beyond the cape, this sight opened up to us. Both the wind and the wave went just to meet us. As they say, it came from where they didn’t expect it))) Approximately in the center of the frame is Balaklava, and Sevastopol is to the left and further, and is hidden in bad weather)) Then no one was filming, so there will only be a story. Walking towards the storm

Here is our track with my timestamps. The lighthouse in the upper right corner is Cape Sarych.

11:00 we turned north, naive))

11:50 The waves are still growing, according to my estimate, they are about 2.2 meters (we have a freeboard of almost a meter + my eyes are about 80 cm higher + the crest of the wave, when we are in the hollow, another half a meter above my eyes, .. and if you count, as your heart tells you, then four-meter waves, no less!)))))), but regular. True, sometimes a series of noticeably higher waves comes, well at least rarely. Sometimes the ridges collapse. We were already going under a fairly twisted staysail and motor, but now we decided to remove the staysail completely, anyway, the wind and the wave were definitely oncoming. Twist-then twisted, but somehow not very good. The fact is that we have a stupid furling system without a stay fairing. The sail is raised on rax-carbines with an endless halyard and twists simply around the stay. But in such a wind as it is blowing now, the lower part is twisted tightly, and a pocket is formed at the top, which is fluttered by the wind.

12:00 tried to re-spin, and it was a mistake. The furling jammed, and while we were fiddling with it, the sail spontaneously untwisted and began to tear. Then I gave up the tiller and ran to the bowsprit to lower the sail completely, but it didn’t work: the weakened endless halyard quickly entangled one of the raks, and, which is typical, just a meter above the place where I could reach.

12:20 we turned around and went along the wave, so it shakes less, otherwise it’s inconvenient for me to jump on a bowsprit going up and down with almost 5m amplitude in an attempt to lower the staysail. So Sasha made his way to me, but both of us do not have enough strength.

13:00 The jib is completely broken. A garland of flailing flags dangles on the stay, but so far it has not been possible to lower it. Well, all right, we turn north again, hoping to reach and hide in Balaklava Bay. Although it is unlikely to succeed, our maximum speed is about 1 knot.

13:50 cheers! we managed to lower the remains of the staysail and put it into the cabin. From time to time squalls with rain

At 15:00 I decided to go ashore and go back to Yalta. I'm alone on deck, there's nothing to get wet for everyone. Sometimes dolphins are shown. They jump out of large waves not up, but sideways. Unbelievably beautiful. Also, the water is still the same turquoise, and in contrast to the black sky, it seems to be illuminated from somewhere in the depths.

16:00 I tried to turn to Balaklava again, but quickly realized that I was in vain ..

And here is what happened in Balaklava around that time (videos taken from YouTube). At least we managed without hail, good!)

At 17:20 we finally laid down on the return course. We are already under the cover of the coast, but we are blown away from it by masses constantly descending from the mountains, I don’t even know what to call them correctly. Here a cloud hangs on the mountain, and suddenly falls down and flies at you, right before your eyes. A beautiful sight. But wet)) The waves under the cover of the shore did not become smaller, but the regularity was gone, it seems that they do not come from any direction, but grow vertically, in a chaotic manner, and only at the moment the clouds descend from the mountains, when the wind picks up sharply, line up. But during all this time only one wave rolled over the side, completely flooding the entire deck, and this happened when I stared and did not have time to substitute the stern for the approaching ridge. But inside the boat everything is shaking, everything that is possible is scattered, scattered and flooded. The guys are securely wedged in their beds, and only Fenya flies back and forth, because he cannot understand what is happening and is trying to find a quiet place. Sometimes Katya catches her, and then she, too, is fixed for a short time. I called agent Vasily in Yalta and asked him to reserve againl us a place in the port. Sometimes Kolya replaces me on the steering wheel so that I can rest and change into dry clothes.

It is strange why the border guards are silent today? The shore swims past us so slowly that it seems as if we are standing and we will never reach Yalta) At about 10 pm, already in complete darkness, we approached Cape Ai-Todor. The storm has already begun to subside. When we turned around the cape, a beam of a powerful searchlight grabbed us from the shore and accompanied us for about a minute. At 23 o'clock the port appeared. I went downstairs to call port control, and saw that the walkie-talkie was not on channel 16. That's why the border guards were silent, well, they will arrange for me!)) I called the port control, and immediately, without letting him answer,border guards burst into conversation. It’s good that at that moment they were talking to me on the radio, they would have been nearby, they probably would have put me against the wall)))) Even the port control began to exhort them that in such a storm I had no time for them, but they do not let up. I don’t have the strength to talk to them, and I report that I will contact as soon as we dock, and switch to port control. At 23:25 we moored in the same place where we left in the morning, 18 hours 46 minutes ago...

5'th of July. The border guards woke me up in the morning. "Is anyone on Valhalla?" they shouted from the shore. I had to quickly get dressed and climb out onto the deck. There are two border guards, and they are very polite. They even apologized for their job. But a protocol was drawn up against me, despite the force majeure circumstances and all my explanations. It is impossible to walk in the dark without AIS. But I did not want to quarrel with them, especially after they wrote in the protocol instead of a staysail - "taxel". Fenya immediately hid somewhere, probably thought that they would tear her too, or instead of pairsthey will raise the mustache))) I wonder where she would have a head angle, and where is a tack?)) When the border guards left, port control called us and asked us to move to another place, since some kind of boat was going to fill up with water in our place . Having chosen the anchor and moved almost under the side of the hefty motor ship (there it is in the center of the frame with blue pipes), we went to have breakfast in the city.

Then we walked a little along the embankment, then Katya, Fenya and I went to the boat, and Kolya and Sasha continued the excursion.

After lunch, a pilot came to us, who would take a large ship out of the port, and warned us to start the engine and be on the alert at the time of its departure, otherwise we could be slammed into the pier by a wave from its propellers)) Fun)

But in fact, the fun began much earlier. Soon a wave from the sea began to enter the port, and I felt that an anchor was crawling in our place. For a while I slowly picked it up and kept the boat under control, but then, with another jerk on the wave, the anchor broke, and we were slightly attached to the concrete wall of the pier by the front railing. Katya and I had to hurriedly throw off all the mooring lines and quickdraws that we had prepared to deal with the wave from the ship, get out and throw the anchor, and then moor again. When we finished, the boys showed upwhich, although they were in a hurry to help us, but lingered at the checkpoint - they lost our crew list there, and they did not want to let them through. Then I asked the port control to enter the port water area on an inflatable dinghy, and we dropped the second anchor. And the ship calmly departed later, and we didn’t even rock))

On this, the Yalta adventures ended, it was getting dark, the border guards had issued an application for departure for tomorrow, the forecast was good, I hope this is the last night in Yalta this season. And then it’s already somehow tired of hanging around here, it’s boring))))

Thanks for reading, to be continued...