The Danube Delta Part 2 Nikolaev, Ukraine June 25, 2004 Hi Folks, We are here in Nikolaev at the base of the River Bug, a city of about a million, formerly a naval shipbuilding center and a closed city for 50 years until 1999 because of its strategic importance. Now the shipyards are underused and the city may have to look to other sources to maintain its economy. The Maritime Museum was OK, but not as good as the one in Odessa. I will probably not be able to send this until we are at our next destination, Kherson, but I wanted to have it ready to send whenever I can get access to an internet location. All is well with us. The people are friendly and the bureaucracy is not too bad, but so far I would not recommend boaters bother to come to the Ukraine. Take land tours to Odessa, Kiev and Sevastopol instead. We were not able to get insurance to cover us for the Ukraine or Bulgaria and Romania. The risk is not worth it! Bulgaria and Romania were nicer, and frankly, more secure, but not the Ukraine. Boaters on the KAYRA will have more support to negotiate the bureaucracies involved, but for individual boaters the bureaucracies are very trying! This log completes our tour of the Danube Delta and gets us back to Tulcea where other problems started as I will describe in my next log. There is a general election in Canada on June 28th and the results will be known within a few hours of the polls closing in BC, unlike the agony and prolonged uncertainty of the last US election in 2000. I hope the Conservatives win, displacing the Liberals who have unfortunately dominated with majority governments for the past 12 years to the detriment of Canada especially on the world stage. By the time this is sent, the election will be over and the new parliament determined. I hope Canadians are wise enough to reject the scandal plagued corruption of the Liberals, and be open minded enough to give the Conservatives a chance, especially in Ontario. I hope by the end of this month we will have Prime Mister Harper. Enjoy the log. All the best, Aubrey **************************************************************************** Log #32n The Danube Delta Part 2 Our second full day at anchor in the Delta was a quiet gray rainy day lazily spent doing a few tasks on Veleda and catching up on my logs. Bird noises were almost absent, and flights of birds greatly reduced in the rainy weather. I still enjoy sitting out in the cockpit watching the myriad diamond white eruptions on the leaden calm water as the rain pelts down. The raindrops splashing on the surface and drumming on the Bimini and dodger add to a serene pleasure I feel while sitting in the sheltered cockpit watching Nature at work. As the wind picks up, it creates intricate crystal cat’s-paws, swirls, and ripples on the quiet river, advancing and receding as it dances around Veleda. Sometimes I enjoy the feel of the blown mist or spray on the cool breezes as they waft under the bimini until Veleda straightens herself to face the new direction of the gusts, sheltering me in her cockpit. As I write this, I laugh as I read Judy’s comment in our log, describing the day as “Yucky”. We weighed anchor the third morning to head back and up the main Sulina Channel to another anchorage in the Crisan-Caraorman Canal, across from Lebada (where the private electrical line limits access to that side channel). As we motored down the channel, we passed a dredge barge with four long conveyor belt arms stretching out like a four legged spider. We were able to pass outside of the two arms extending over half the channel, and waved to the few workers and their dog on board. We anchored another mile downstream from the barge at a junction of another side canal that was marked “No entry for motorized vessels”. This provided a tree lined shore, and a widening of the channel where we could anchor out of the way of canal traffic. A few single barge tows and one hotel barge passed us with no problems and friendly waves from their crews. The opposite side had a muddy shoreline with dozens of egrets, herons, and ibis stalking small fish in the shallows. There were terns dive-bombing the water for their food, and the occasional swallow manouevering like a fighter jet chasing after mosquitoes and other flying insects. It was a pleasure watching the egrets and herons taking flight to alight on another stretch of shoreline and resume their long-legged syncopated search for supper. Another idyllic anchorage! We launched Sprite and motored down the canal, branching up another side channel absent of trees but with reed banks giving way to marshy areas and some pasture land occupied by a few horses and cattle. We stopped and climbed up another observation tower to peer over this flat treeless marshy wetland. A small tour boat puttered up the canal, the half dozen passengers armed with binoculars and enjoying their canal tour, but possibly envying us exploring the area, the reed beds and side channels, in our dinghy. These small tour boats are a good way for tourists to see the Delta. They can take day trips from Tulcea, or ferry down to some of the canal-side resorts. Some of the tour companies provide hotel barges that are towed into the canals, and then use the tow boat to explore the area, returning to the anchored barge for meals and overnight accommodations. This allows the tourists the luxury of hotel accommodations in the tranquil anchorages of the canals, surrounded by the reed beds, marshes, and bird life. Returning to Veleda, we then took Sprite up the small channel across from our anchorage. It was a tree lined but marshy area, alive with bird life. It was in here that we noticed the squacco herons, skulking brownish herons with white bellies. At first we thought they were night herons, but checking the bird book identified the species for us. Then we went up to the main Sulina channel and across to a pontoon for the ecological information center which, Murphy’s Law, was closed that day. We went through a fence to explore the still unfinished hotel complex beside the information center. It has been under construction for several years, (noted as unfinished in our Black Sea Pilot published in 2001) and is still only a shell with several sections now glass enclosed, but quite incomplete. By the time it is finished, if ever, there will be the requirement to renovate the weather eroded sections first built several years ago, possibly including the reed thatched roof. We climbed up the solid concrete observation tower to overlook this juncture of channels. We could see the electrical wires that stretched across the entrance channel and the system used to lower it for the periodic ferry or tourist boat. Even though it was overcast and a bit drizzly, we then took Sprite under the wires and into the smaller channel, up the tree lined shores with some fallen trees cluttering the passage. We could not have brought Veleda into this channel and appreciated the men who waved us out of it when we attempted it a few days earlier. This was another idyllic waterway of trees, reeds, marshes, and plentiful bird life. We motored a couple of miles up then drifted or paddled down, enjoying the misty stillness broken by the startled flight of birds, and the occasional call of ducks or cuckoos. The birds were smarter than we were, as they stayed put in the rain. Next morning after a rainy, drizzly night we set off under cloudy skies. The dredge barge was still working and its booms extended over both sides of the channel, not high enough for us to go under. The men on the barge then started to winch the barge to one side giving us some room to squeeze by. However in going to the side of the channel we nudged into seaweed beds and grounded on the muddy bottom. We had to wiggle our way forward and astern to get into deeper water, to inch by the extended arms of the dredge. Once past we were OK, but even in mid channel we had only 10 feet of water until re-entering the Sulina channel. It was an uneventful trip back, unfurling the genoa when wind favoured us to assist us motoring the 26 miles upstream to Tulcea. We went aft of the vessel we rafted off last time, and had a quiet night’s sleep until 0715 next morning when we were hailed and asked to relocate to make room for a large river hotel ship with its bows looming just downstream from us, waiting to secure its lines across our location. No problem, as we were directed to go alongside a hospital boat which would actually ease our ability to go ashore and to have the officials come aboard for our clearance papers. Then the problems started! Next log