Tomorrow.
On 26 April at 17:00 Vladivostok time we arrive at the Vladivostok Sea Terminal.
There we surrender ourselves to the authorities, complete clearance and undergo inspection. We have no idea how long that will take. We have never before arrived in Russia by yacht.
Then we move to the Seven Feet Yacht Club.
There we moor, hug the bravest people who come to meet us, run out for pelmeni, take a shower and go to sleep :).
That is our prediction.
Now about the Sea of Japan in April.
You cannot see a thing.
The fog is so dense, guys, that even the bowsprit is disappearing into the smoke.
Today the instruments showed two vessels: a drifting tanker and another ship.
With your eyes you can make out something only within about fifty metres.
Night watches at sea are a separate song even without fog.
The night before last we nearly finished singing that song for good.
There was no fog yet, but two lights appeared on the horizon.
Only two.
And both, as luck would have it, directly on our course.
Fishing vessels lit by powerful floodlights had wandered a long way from shore.
For a long time we chose the “angle” at which to approach them: pass left or right.
A sailing vessel does not have unlimited room for manoeuvre.
We could pass the fisherman either by bearing away as far as possible or by luffing sharply toward the wind.
In both cases the sails and rigging began flogging.
We managed to clear the first vessel without disaster, though it occupied two hours of attention.
The second light sat directly ahead.
According to AIS it was moving slowly toward us on a roughly reciprocal parallel course.
We bore away as far as possible and held that course on the limit for more than an hour.
The ship, meanwhile, was stationary and fishing.
Five hundred metres remained before the closest point.
We prepared to relax.
Then our amazingly wonderful fisherman — who could not see us on AIS but should have been able to see our navigation light in the empty sea and definitely detect us on radar, because our radar detector was screaming itself hoarse — this good person, may God give him health, starts his engine five hundred metres before we meet and heads directly at us.
— Mum, he's coming at ten knots! How far to collision? — Half a mile… Three hundred metres… Two hundred… Fifty… Thirty… Aaaah!
With the confidence of the proud cruiser *Varyag*, which does not surrender to the enemy, I press the horn.
Our horn bellows like a trumpet.
The captain wakes, races into the wheelhouse and switches on the deck light.
We cannot bear away any farther or the yacht will lose way.
Turning into the wind would take us across the course of this kamikaze.
Starting the engine and trying to run from him is not much of a solution either.
Our maximum speed under engine is lower than his.
The sails prevent a sharp turn.
We have no reverse.
You understand the picture.
A sailing yacht, deck brilliantly illuminated, under full sail and sounding long loud blasts, grows in the path of a brightly lit fishing vessel.
Seconds fly away in tens.
The ship, with the persistence of a bulldog, continues straight at us.
At fifty metres, when we are already preparing to swim if we are lucky and say goodbye to life if we are not, the kamikaze driver returns from nirvana and throws the helm hard to port.
The squeal of brakes is swallowed by the sea.
— Ugh. They hire anyone from an advert these days, I breathe out.
— So, darling, have you washed your trousers? I return one of the captain's own favourite phrases.
— No, I only just got up, he replies and disappears back into the bedroom.
The girls and I need another half-hour to stop shaking and conduct a post-incident review.
The lesson is simple.
Avoiding collision at sea is your personal responsibility.
You cannot rely on the other vessel seeing you too.
Those are the two main pieces of news.
Everything else concerns preparations for arrival.
The girls are finishing the remaining tails of their schoolwork.
Lada is already preparing to return to online classes at her beloved St Andrew the Apostle Geography School.
She hopes she has not fallen too far behind during the passage and misses the lessons and her classmates.
Even the teachers :).
Remember *The Irony of Fate*? “Nadenka is a wonderful teacher. Her colleagues love her, the parents… Even the children!”
Lada has exactly those kinds of teachers at GeoSchool — teachers loved even by children.
While I tell you about her studies, she is finishing a geography report on the Southern Ocean.
One more thing: the deckhand insists that I tell you she now has a fringe.
Meaning that I, her mother, gave her one yesterday.
I burned my own hair because I wanted to step ashore as a dyed princess.
I will step ashore as I am :).
At least we will laugh.
Nastya accidentally caught Chinese radio.
Or Korean.
She was switching the receiver off.
Now she is going to sleep before the night watch.
Tonight Nastya and I will take the night between us so the captain can rest.
Hedgehogs in the fog…
This lack of visibility close to land worries me greatly.
To achieve nirvana tonight we have decided to eat fresh bread.
Lada decided today should feel festive, mixed dough and baked loaves.
And I am thinking: Should I return to healthy living by eating bread at night? Or preserve my figure so that our people back home recognise me?
I have not decided.
I will tell you tomorrow.
I have already missed the evening exercises — everyone completed theirs while I was writing this post.
Dear people of the Russian Far East, if you come to meet us tomorrow, we will be very happy.
But please decide for yourselves, because for now we cannot give you a more precise arrival time than the one stated at the beginning of this post.
Please keep in touch with our shore team.
Our arrival in Vladivostok and all meetings with press and public are being coordinated by Olesya Porsina.
She is in all the groups — Telegram, VK, Facebook and Instagram.
A press conference is scheduled for 28 April at 16:00.
I know nothing more about it :)).
Yet.
The captain has just tied several dozen signal flags into one long line.
We will enter port dressed in bunting.
Wish us luck, guys.
May the final hundred miles through dense fog pass safely and correctly.
By the way, there is little wind and we have been motoring all day.
We need to make it.
As we like to say: make it before the storm.
Bad weather is forecast for tomorrow night.
Thank you to everyone who is with us, friends.
Thank you for your support, your concern and your kind comments.
Heartfelt thanks to Evgeny, Dmitry, Igor G., Sergey Zh., Natalia D. and Igor for supporting the morale of the entire crew through YooMoney.
May your dreams come true.
Hugs.
Sent by satellite at the beginning of day 57 at sea.
Coordinates: 41°18′ N, 132°44′ E.
Our current position and track should be visible under the Route tab on our website. It shows the path from the Rockstar Iridium 360 tracker provided by MVS Telecom.