(from my diary)
23 November 1992
High winds and mild temperature (23°C/73°F). Going along Western Sahara. Zhenya bathed in the pool, but I did not dare. In the evening I sent my mother a radiogram. Three days in a row I tried with no luck to arrange a phone call to her. Either the radio operator was busy or we were not on the air.
The previous day was the last day when we saw land. We would be in the open ocean for one month. The “Academic Gorbunov” was going along the West coast of Africa, around the Cape of Good Hope and across the Indian Ocean to Australia. The much shorter, but costly route was via the Suez Canal. The Baltic Sea Shipping Company (BSSC), that owned the ship, did not want to pay the hefty passage fee and we were in for a long ocean voyage.
I do not know how much the fee was in 1992. At the time of writing this, a vessel on the average pays $465,000 for the passage. The South Africa route saves about half of this amount. Just for comparison, the cost of going through the Panama Canal is up to $2,000 for a private yacht and $150,000 for a large commercial ship which is cheaper than to sail around South America.
If the ship was running out of fresh water we would call into Cape Town for a resupply. The crew reassured me that this would not be necessary. The “Academic Gorbunov” had enough fresh water to last until Australia. In case something happened the ship could use her desalination unit to make fresh water. That was rather disappointing because I did not mind a stop at Cape Town for a number of reasons.
24 November 1992
Crossed the Tropic of Cancer (Northern Tropic). It is much warmer now. Already bathed in the pool twice since morning.
Once a day the small pool on the main deck was refilled with salty overboard water with no chlorine. Swimming in the pool felt like being in the ocean. The crew rarely used it. For us, passengers, it was heaven. The two crew wives sometimes joined us at the pool too.
With the British couple, there were now 6 passengers on the ship plus 2 crew wives. The “Academic Gorbunov” had 4 passenger cabins. Maria’s and ours were on the starboard side. Two more cabins were exactly opposite, on the port side. One was occupied by the British, the other by the ship’s cook and his wife Alla. They were recently married, young and had no children. Alla quit her job as a substitute teacher to be with her husband at sea. She was funny, full of energy, easy-going and laughed a lot. Initially, their cabin was supposed to be given to Mikhail, our other male passenger. But Mikhail traveled alone, so captain put him in a small cabin below the waterline with the sailors. The cook and Alla got a passenger cabin where they were more comfortable than in the usual cook’s quarters. Mikhail, who according to his own words heavily bribed the ticket woman in order to get on the “Academic Gorbunov”, expected a better treatment for his money. Captain, however, did not care about the bribes received by the ticket woman and assigned the cabins based on his own judgment. As the result, Mikhail bore a grudge against all other passengers during the entire trip and barely spoke with us.
The chief engineer’s wife was a pleasant middle-aged woman. She spent most of the time in her cabin that was rather luxurious. It was on the top deck and looked the same as the captain’s cabin. It consisted of several rooms, a kitchen, and a full bathroom. Only the captain and chief engineer, two top officers on the ship, had a bathtub in their cabins.
25 November 1992
Hazy, hot and sultry. The cabin is air-conditioned; it was even a little chilly to sleep. Flying fish. During the day the engines stopped working for a short time and it became very quiet. Then we moved on. Zhenya does not get out of the pool. The sunset was pearly grey with no hues of red, yellow or any other color.
The midday stop was due to a failure of one of the two ship engine. The “Academic Gorbunov” now had only one working engine that did not propel the ship forward fast enough. At that time I did not understand the significance of what happened and paid little attention to that event.
My son and I stood on the ship bow and gazed at the waves when we noticed medium-size silver fishes with wings. They jumped out of the water, flew a little frantically beating their wings and fell back into the ocean. This was no doubt the flying fish. We enjoyed watching them until the fish disappeared.
The other, not so pleasant sight was a while before that when the ship sailed through a patch of floating trash. The ocean surface was covered with garbage as far as the eye could see. Most of it was plastic like bags, bottles and so on. The currents carried pieces of trash into one huge disgusting patch. It took the ship more than one hour to get out of the drifting garbage.
26 November 1992
Skirted the bulge of Africa. The ship is at the latitude of Liberia. Air temperature is the same as water temperature (31°C/88°F), but it does not feel hot. Got a radiogram from my mother in which she replied to ours.
27 November 1992
Crossed the equator at 6 pm.
Crossing the equator is a major event even for those who had done it and usually, it is a call for festivities. We did get certificates to confirm that we crossed the equator that were simply brought to our cabin by first mate and this was all.
The crew worked like madmen around the clock trying to figure out what was wrong with the broken engine. My son and I were allowed to go down into the engine room to see it. This room was the heart of the ship. It smelled of machine oil, the noise from the engine was deafening. The passages were wide enough for just one person to squeeze through them. The mechanics dirty like the devil himself did their jobs.
It was later concluded that the engine could only be repaired at a port. With one working engine, the “Academic Gorbunov” was falling behind the schedule and the BSSC was facing fines for a late delivery. Captain looked gloomy at dinner.
28 November 1992
Cloudy, temperature 29°C/84°F, strong wind. Too cold to be on the deck.
29 November 1992
Today is three weeks since the beginning of our voyage and its halfway point. Overcast, the sun was not visible all day. The crew said that this weather was not typical for the equatorial region.
30 November 1992
Abandon ship drill. Everyone came out to lifeboats wearing life vests. Watched “The Godfather”, Part III. By now I’ve read several volumes of Honoré de Balzac. Reading “The Portrait of a Lady” by Henry James.
1 December 1992
The temperature dropped to 23°C/73°F, the ship is rolling again. Slept through the first half of the day and sat on the deck after lunch. Rolling does not bother me there.
All passengers except for Mikhail and the British preferred to be on the deck during the day. We talked and the chief engineer’s wife, who usually did not speak much, suddenly started talking about a disaster with a Soviet freighter “Mechanic Tarasov” ten years before our trip. At that time the state news agency TASS issued a brief statement with little information. Covering up all bad events was typical for the Soviet government regardless of the nature of a catastrophe. Lots of rumors and speculations about what actually happened circulated through the grapevine. As it turned out, that disaster affected the life of the chief engineer’s wife.
On the 15th of February 1982 “Mechanic Tarasov” was in the North Atlantic Ocean near Newfoundland going from Quebec to Leningrad with a cargo of paper. The weather forecast was for a severe storm. Despite that, the ship left the port. She soon developed a list. The crew begged to return to the port before too late. Captain Bylkin and the official in Moscow refused their request. Instead, the captain ordered to fill a ballast tank on the opposite side with seawater to stabilize the ship. After hours of pumping water into the tank, the list did not decrease. A sailor sent to the lower decks reported that one of the cargo containers got unfasten and its corner punched a hole in the ballast tank, so the seawater was pouring into the holds. Securing the containers, as usual, was done by the crew to save dollars.
On that day an American mobile drilling platform “Ocean Ranger” that was operating in the Canadian waters got severely damaged by the same storm. A Mayday call from the platform requested immediate assistance and several vessels were dispatched. By the time they got to “Ocean Ranger”, it sank into the Atlantic Ocean killing all 84 workers. Soviet journalists later created a legend that the “Mechanic Tarasov” turned around to rescue them despite having issues herself. The truth was that the Soviet freighter was not in the position to save anyone.
The “Mechanic Tarasov” did not have watertight bulkheads. Moreover, this ship was designed for coastal navigation and could not withstand ocean storms. Using her on transatlantic routes was a violation of safety rules.
The crew made a heroic attempt to plaster the hole. The plaster did not hold long and captain Bylkin sent a radiogram to the BSSC in Leningrad asking for help. He could not make himself to authorize transmitting a SOS distress signal fearing that would be an end of his career. A number of Soviet vessels were in the area and the captain hoped that they could rescue his ship. An unwritten law of the Soviet times was not to use foreign assistance under any circumstances. A fishing vessel “Ivan Dvorsky” that was nearest to the “Mechanic Tarasov” went towards her. The distance between the two ships was about 100 nautical miles which meant about 14 hours of sailing in stormy weather.
To make the matters worse, the huge waves ripped away a piece of the deck from the “Mechanic Tarasov” and more water was getting inside. The sinking ship was noticed by a helicopter of the Canadian Coastal Guard. The Canadians offered to airlift the entire crew. Captain Bylkin replied that help was not needed. A Soviet ship was coming to save them.
A small Danish trawler “Sigurfari” approached too and got the same response. Her captain Olsen, however, reasoned that it was better to stay nearby anyway. The “Sigurfari” did not leave and it proved to be the wise decision.
By the nightfall, the crew had been fighting for survival for over one day. The bow was sinking fast and the ship was turning vertically. When the “Ivan Dvorsky” reached the disaster place her captain, being afraid that the two ships could collide, hesitated to come close to the “Mechanic Tarasov” to throw a lifeline. Launching lifeboats was impossible in such conditions.
The “Mechanic Tarasov” crew seeing no rescue actions from the “Ivan Dvorsky” started to jump overboard. Their ship went down below the surface forming a huge funnel that sucked in those who did not get far enough. It was 3 am on the 16th of February.
The crew of the low freeboard “Sigurfari” pulled the drowning sailors from the icy water with bare hands that could not be done from the high-sided “Ivan Dvorsky”. They saved 9 people out of 37. Four died shortly from hypothermia. Alexander, the chief engineer of the “Academic Gorbunov”, was one of the 5 survivors.
Days passed before the names of the survivors from the “Mechanic Tarasov” became known to the crew family members. The waiting was very hard, but what happened next was even harder. Alexander’s wife said that other wives called her to vent their anger that their husbands died and hers did not. They said poisonous things like, ‘Your husband has gone mad. Wait until he returns home and you will wish that he had drowned too.’, or ‘He is a cripple now. You will not know what to do with your husband.’
I already noticed that our chief engineer was treated with the utmost respect. Apparently, it was not only because he was highly skilled. Sailors are a superstitious lot. They believe that if someone once survived a catastrophe like this then this person was not destined to die at sea. Thus they regarded Alexander as a live talisman of the ship. With him onboard they had nothing to fear.
2 December 1992
Sunny and cold. I could not work out today because of severe rolling. Crossed the Tropic of Capricorn (Southern Tropic). Fell asleep on the deck in the afternoon and got sunburned.
I read lying in a deck chair and fell asleep. I wore jeans and a long-sleeve jumper. Not much of my skin was exposed to the sun and the day was rather chilly. When I woke up in one hour my feet were burning like hell.
3 December 1992
My face, hands, and feet got sunburned badly. It hurts so much that I cannot stand on my feet. The face and hands are bright red. They are not painful, but it is embarrassing to be seen like that.
The first mate warned all passengers not stay on the deck for long because of intensive UV radiation in these latitudes. It was too late now to follow his advice. My feet looked as if I had been wearing maroon socks. Walking or even standing hurt. The skin peeled off my feet for weeks after this incident. New skin of a slightly paler color grew and peeled off too. I lost one skin layer after another until it finally stopped happening when we already got to Australia.
4 December 1992
In the morning the ship stopped again for about an hour. The progress is slow. We must be in Freemantle, Australia by the 16th of December, but we probably will not make it. I almost got used to ship rolling. Reading Feuchtwanger. Studying English a little. I became so lazy. It will be difficult for me to change the lifestyle later.
Sailing around the Cape of Good Hope. Pity that we did not get to see Cape Town.