Four Alberta sailors received a taste of old-fashioned Soviet bureaucracy in late June while in the final stages of their successful attempt to sail around the world.
The crew of the 57-foot Idlewild were “captured” and fined $80 during a stop in the northern Russian port of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.
Captain Ben Gray, his two sons and a friend spent two and a half days of their three-day visa doing the paper work required to land at the isolated port city, which is the second largest city in the world that cannot be reached by road.
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Gray was initially told he couldn’t land his boat at the port and could either fly in or stay away. It’s believed the Idlewild is the first recreational boat to stop at the sensitive submarine harbour.
Most people arrive by airplane or freighter and customs and immigration officials didn’t know what to do with a small boat entering from the sea. Before the Idlewild even landed the crew broke the law by not reporting their arrival exactly 12 miles out of port.
“We were supposed to call 12 miles out and I could have BS’d my way through if I’d known,” Gray wrote in his log.
“We got here at 07:00 and thought we would soon be through customs and immigration. No luck. The detective and interpreter were here until 17:20 so no customs until tomorrow and to make sure we don’t sneak ashore, another Coast Guard anchored near us and will be there all night. It is part of the Russian experience.”
Gray believes the authorities were embarrassed by the Idlewild’s unnoticed entrance into the harbour and the crew was fined $80 for the infraction.
“Their national TV came for an interview and asked if we were frightened when we were captured? Did the navy have guns and board our ship? We said no, they were very nice. The previous local news had made quite a BS about how we were captured. They were embarrassed about us getting to the inner harbour without being noticed and put the shoe on the other foot by implying we were like criminals wandering around and will be fined. I fail to see where a $80 fine will prevent a foreign warship to enter.”
Despite the bureaucracy, three Russians who have done a lot of sailing were busy working behind the scenes helping to ease the Idlewild’s entrance into port. Once on shore, the Russians toured the crew around the city of 200,000, took them to a grocery store where they were given a free bottle of champagne and later visited with the crew on board their boat.
“The women are beautiful and sensuous, the men are friendly and very helpful but the bureaucrats are insecure, distrustful, unhelpful and arrogant. The navy people were good,
capable and nice,” Gray wrote.
After leaving Russia, the crew sailed to Attu and looked at relics left over from the Second World War, when the Americans and Japanese fought a bloody battle over the most westerly island in the Aleutian Islands chain.
On June 25 at 10:57 p.m. Alaska time the crew arrived at the spot in the Bering Strait where they had officially begun their circumnavigation 11 months earlier, after sailing north to the Arctic Ocean from their home in Dunvegan, Alta.
To mark the occasion, they poured scotch into the ocean for Neptune and the sailors celebrated with a drink. Surprisingly when they crossed their tracks there wasn’t the jubilation and excitement they thought there would be when they began the journey in Dunvegan on the Peace River, said Gray from Nome, Alaska.
“There was a bit of relief and satisfaction, for sure,” he said. “It’s been a remarkably pleasant journey.”
On a sailing website following the journey one follower wrote: “An unlikely boat, an unlikely crew and the unlikeliest place to complete a navigation.”
Gray, a retired bison rancher, said their journey has been unconventional from the beginning.
They began in Dunvegan in the middle of the Prairies, sailed up the Peace River, completed their circumnavigation in the opposite direction from the one most sailors take, and stopped at sites few people ever get to see.
“Our whole route was unconventional,” Gray said.
The crew is now sailing south along the Alaska and British Columbia coasts, intending to visit Juneau, Alaska, and Prince Rupert, B.C., before travelling through the Inside Passage between the mainland and Vancouver Island and ending their journey in Vancouver.
The crew plans to arrive at the Shelter Island Marina in Richmond, B.C. on Aug. 11.
