The Danube Delta Part 1 Odessa, Ukraine June 20, 2004 Hi Folks, We are back from four days up in Kiev, an enjoyable experience. I am impressed with all the architectural flourishes on the buildings here in Odessa and in Kiev. I find myself wanting to take pictures of buildings with their accoutrements, they are so interesting in classical and baroque styles. The gold onion domes of the churches provide a feast for the eyes. Food and transportation are usually quite cheap, with local bus and subway tokens costing only 10 cents. The Grivna is the currency used and there are about four Grivna to the Canadian dollar. We have to be careful of taxi drivers as they do not use meters, and will rip us off if we don’t establish a cost before we get in. We have walked many miles and visited many museums and historical sites which I’ll describe in later logs. I am ready to get back to sea and small anchorages after over a week here in Odessa and Kiev. Hopefully I will be able to send this off before we leave. In this log we get into the Danube Delta of Romania, a bird watcher’s paradise. All the best, Aubrey Log #32m The Danube Delta Part 1 We left the river anchorage early on May 27, downstream on the Danube for Tulcea, altering to starboard at mile marker 43 going down the Sulina channel (instead of the Ismail [Ukraine] Channel), arrived at the police pontoon at noon hour, were shortly checked out by the Frontier Police and directed alongside a small tour boat on a pontoon in downtown Tulcea, opposite the train station (45° 10.9’N, 028° 47.6’E). On the river, boats and ships moor to pontoons or barges braced to the shore with steel pipes and wire hawsers, as the current and changeable river levels make fixed piers impractical except for large shipyards. One of the Frontier Police skippers, Niko, spoke some English and befriended us, taking us over town, showing us the markets, internet cafes, and escorting us through the local natural history museum and aquarium. We gave the owner of the small tour boat we were rafted off a couple of beers in appreciation of the free mooring for the night. Niko indicated that we did not need a Delta permit, but Judy and I felt better going to the Delta administration center where we purchased a permit for a nominal $0.80 CDN a day to explore the area. We also read in the Lonely Planet guide that there was a $200.00 fine for not having such a permit, and we did not want to risk it even though we were out of season. As it turned out, we were never asked to show the permit over the next few days. Oh well, if the little money goes to help this biodiversity sphere in its conservation efforts, that is fine with us. We purchased a detailed map and booklet and were ready to head downstream into the Delta. The Danube Delta (Delta Dunarii) is the second largest delta in Europe after the Volga. It covers an area of over 5800 square kilometres of wetlands, most of which are in Romania. The river exits into the Black Sea through three main channels, the Sulina and St. George’s (Sfantu Gheorghe) channels in Romania and the Chilia (Kilia) Channel through the Ukraine. (The spelling of place names will vary depending on the translation from Ukrainian or Romanian into English.) In addition to being on UNESCO’s World Heritage list, the area is protected under the auspices of the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve Authority (DDBRA) established after Ceasescu’s abortive and disastrous attempts to engineer it into an agricultural region, doing great harm to the ecological characteristics. He attempted to divert the natural water flow, tearing up reed beds and engineering arbitrary canals to drain and reclaim land for farming. The Delta, being at the 45th parallel, halfway between the North Pole and the equator, is a sanctuary for over 300 species of birds and a major migration route, especially mid-April to mid-May and late October. It also has one of the largest single expanses of reed beds in the world. We were privileged to have several days to explore this exotic alluvial exit of the Danube River into the Black Sea. Within a half hour of leaving Tulcea we turned to port, to explore an unmarked (on our chart) channel at mile marker 35. It was a narrow canal, about 25 metres (70 feet) wide and 5 to 7 metres (15 to 20 feet) deep, fringed on both sides with weeping willows, and reed beds, behind which was pasture land. On our Delta map it indicated the channel, Gura Trofilca, ended at a small lake several kilometres down. However, we were looking only for a lunch stop and dropped anchor in a small widening of the channel to leisurely enjoy some Romanian white wine, salad and cold meats in our cockpit on this warm sunny day. After motoring up to the main channel, we motored on down to where the channel split just beyond mile 34, and we continued to port on the Sulina branch instead of the St. Georges Channel. This was the more traveled channel, about 100 metres wide, on which we passed and were passed by several ferries (including a few hydrofoils), and some barge tows. The open fields were populated by periodic groups of cattle, sheep and goats. We passed several villages along the shoreline, with thatch-roofed houses, black wooden double-ended rowing skiffs, the occasional ferry or barge dock, a few dredges, and some boat hotels and shore side hotel/restaurants. Bird life increased dramatically! There were a couple of loops off the main channel that we wanted to explore, the first at mile 14, Lebada, where we were warned by previous boaters that a private electricity line made passage impossible. However as we nosed in, there were some men in a small rowboat with the electrical cable lowered, allowing us and the ferry just behind us to pass. This channel immediately forked, and when we attempted to take the smaller channel to starboard the men in the rowboat waved us off, indicating mast height in that channel (Dunarea Veche) was too low. We did not want to go up the other channel, and fearing we might be trapped inside until the next ferry passage when the electricity line was raised, we returned into the main Sulina Channel to continue downstream. On the opposite side we eyed a smaller canal, the Canalu Crisan, which we planned to explore on our way back up to Tulcea in a few days. On down we went, taking pictures of the thatch-roofed houses and the horse-drawn carts, and trying to capture the egrets and herons in mid-flight. I did get a good shot of a flock of storks circling over one of the fields. Down at mile 8.5 we entered Dunarea Veche from the downstream end, a wide channel, not as overgrown as the upper end we tried to enter earlier. A couple of miles up we anchored (45° 11.9’N, 029° 29.2’E) abreast an opening into a small side channel covered with willows, the opposite side a reed fringed pasture, a quiet anchorage with no civilization around. It was 1745 and we had traveled 38 miles since leaving Tulcea that morning. After supper we hoisted our anchor light as there were a few fishing boats around. The night sky was glorious! However, the racket from the hundreds of ducks and other bird life was almost intimidating! Intense loud cackles, quacks, screeches, creaks, chirps, cuckoo calls and caws of hooded crows assaulted the ears when on deck, but at least were muted below. I have never heard such an intensity of bird noises, mostly ducks. Scanning the reeds I would swear they were only a few feet away, but they were not visible except for the occasional egret gliding into the far shore. This cacophony kept up all night, more intense than daytime! Next day we rowed Sprite quietly up the side channel by our anchorage. It was overhung by willows and poplar trees above the reed strewn shore, home to a fantastic assortment of birds, frogs, marsh grasses, water lilies and the occasional water snake. Back into the main channel past Veleda, we motored a couple of miles up into another side channel, Canal Magearu, alternately motoring and rowing to enjoy the isolation, the serene tranquility, trying to spot the bird life, meandering into the occasional marshy inlet to identify water fowl and enjoy the white and yellow water lilies, their petals symmetrically reflected in the glassy still water, with frogs departing the vivid green pads as we glided towards them. We went up to the end of the canal to a bird watching tower, planning to have lunch at the top while surveying the area. However the tower was not the most stable, and bird droppings made it less than appealing for a lunch stop. So we drifted back down wind and down stream enjoying a pleasant picnic lunch in Sprite as we skirted the marshy shoreline. Another advantage of visiting the area this early in the season was few mosquitoes. The bird life was fantastic. Below is a list of the birds we saw in the Delta: hooded crows, swallows, white storks, goldfinches, ruddy shelducks, black winged stilts, cormorants, little egrets, carrion crows, squacco herons, black storks, gray herons, cuckoos, blackbirds, great white egrets, white tailed eagles, magpies, terns, kingfishers, rollers, herring gulls, black headed gulls, cattle egrets, sparrowhawks, mute swans, pied wagtails, spoonbills, ring necked pheasants, glossy ibis, night herons, white pelicans, coots, whiskered terns, ferruginous ducks, woodpeckers, sparrows and other unidentified species. Judy did a good job of spotting them with our binoculars and looking them up in our bird book, “Birds of Britain and Europe”, as we drifted, rowed or motored around in Sprite. We spent about six hours in Sprite exploring the canals and marshes in the area. A great day! That night and next day it was gray and rainy, and so we stayed put. An interesting phenomenon was that the noise of the ducks and other bird life was greatly muted in the rainy weather both day and night. Next log