We woke up famous.
Apparently, after our post *Everything You Need to Know About an Emergency Stop, or the Zombie Apocalypse on Christmas Island*, one compassionate subscriber asked Fedor and Oscar Konyukhov to help rescue us.
Oscar commented on the situation after our yacht was refused assistance at Christmas Island in the Republic of Kiribati. The media then drew their own conclusions and produced reports based on those conclusions — reports that in places matched neither Oscar's words nor reality.
The facts about being refused an emergency stop are described in detail in the zombie-apocalypse post. It also says that we are not dying, that we can stretch our water supply as far as French Polynesia, and that we have plenty of food, although fresh fruit and vegetables would be welcome.
Kiribati is the only country where we tried to obtain water. From Australia all the way to Polynesia we made no other request to enter any port.
What the authorities on Christmas Island knew
Christmas Island, also known as Kiritimati Atoll in Kiribati.
The yacht requested an emergency stop for repairs and to replenish water and fruit.
What happened next?
The shore authorities refused.
Despite the prohibition, we anchored and repaired the most urgent problem. We asked several times for water.
Relying on the human factor, we deliberately stressed how critical the situation was: “We will die in the ocean without your water. Please help us.”
The authorities did not know about our emergency watermaker or that we still had a small amount of water left. They could, however, see that there were children aboard.
Assistance was refused. “Find another country.”
That response violates maritime law and human rights. It also lacks common sense: the crew had been isolated for seventy days and posed no infection risk.
If necessary we could have provided our track record showing dates and the absence of stops in inhabited places. Nobody asked for evidence.
The problem is that refusing assistance in this way became typical official behaviour during the pandemic.
We are not the first yacht to be refused.
In Europe distances are relatively short and another port can often be found. In the Pacific they are enormous. The nearest island where we can replenish water is more than two weeks away.
That is the passage we are making now.
There are plenty of precedents
Let us repeat: in the Pacific ALL countries are closed except Fiji.
Hawaii may possibly accept yachts, but it is not on our route and requires a US visa.
Six months ago a yacht we know crossed the Pacific. Four months from Chile to Fiji. The crew managed to replenish supplies in only two places while unsuccessfully searching for a country where they could go ashore.
Samoa refused them an emergency stop in exactly the same way and provided neither water nor food.
During the final month to Fiji the crew went hungry. One member had diabetes. After arriving in Fiji he died of heart failure.
Can anyone confidently say that a starvation diet and lack of water did not contribute to his death?
We do not need rescuing
What does rescue look like in a real distress situation?
An authority orders the nearest cargo ship to divert from its route. Somehow it transfers water to the crew or evacuates the crew to water.
Nothing even remotely like that has happened to us.
We are experienced ocean sailors. During eight years of active long-distance sailing we have covered more than fifty thousand nautical miles. We have weathered two-month non-stop passages through the Southern Ocean, crossed the Drake Passage in both directions and sailed to Antarctica.
We know almost everything about isolation, self-sufficiency, repairs and survival at sea.
We are coping on our own.
If the Russian Foreign Ministry intervenes on our behalf, water and food will probably be loaded onto the boat at the right locations.
But the ocean is full of yachts without satellite or HF communications. Their crews cannot ask a foreign ministry for intervention. They depend only on humanity and on the law that says assistance cannot be denied to those in distress.
The world has gone mad if it can legally abandon people at sea after they ask for help.
Our outrageous example is only one illustration of this new reality.
This criminal indifference and irrational fear of infection from travellers who have spent months in isolation is not some extraordinary reaction unique to one country. It is a general absurdity that is becoming normal.
Specialised international organisations such as the International Maritime Health Association spend weeks fighting case by case when an injured seafarer or a person suffering a stroke must be taken off a cargo vessel. Yet nobody has enough influence to change the mechanism itself and make it more individual.
For yachts, somebody needs to work out how food and water can be delivered without contact.
So let us draw attention to this nonsense elevated into law rather than to the sensational headline “Yacht with children in distress in the INDIAN (??) Ocean.”
We reproduce the full wording of that gem from a well-known television channel at the end of this report.
Facts about the crew and the Expedition Around the Great Capes and Antarctica with Children
Since every media article gives its own interpretation of the facts, here they are.
Crew of the yacht Lady Mary: Andrey and Marina Klochkov, Nastya, 19, and Lada, 10, who has spent eight of those years living at sea.
We bought the yacht in October 2013 using money that had been saved for an apartment in Novosibirsk. Almost immediately we set off on a major voyage.
During the first winter we crossed the Mediterranean from western Spain to Montenegro as training for a circumnavigation.
In November 2014 we left Montenegro to sail around the world from east to west.
Over the next four years we completed half of the first circumnavigation: Montenegro — Canary Islands — Senegal — The Gambia — Cape Verde — Atlantic crossing in October 2016 — Guiana — Caribbean — Cuba. From Cuba we flew home for one month in March 2017; we have not been home since. Then Mexico — Colombia — Panama — into the Pacific through the Panama Canal — Galápagos — Easter Island — Pitcairn — French Polynesia: Gambier, Marquesas, Tuamotus and Society Islands, including Tahiti.
Because Andrey and I suffered ciguatera poisoning in the Marquesas, we lost time and could no longer reach New Zealand before cyclone season.
So on 22 November 2018 we interrupted that first voyage. We turned south-east, explored the region of phantom islands in the Pacific and headed for Antarctica.
That was the beginning of an expedition along the most difficult round-the-world route: around all the southern capes of the planet and through Antarctica.
The sailing expedition around the great capes and Antarctica is to be entered in the Russian Book of Records as the southernmost circumnavigation completed by a family with children.
Where we are and what is happening now
Since leaving Hobart on 3 September 2021 we have covered more than 7,000 miles by track from Tasmania, through storms around the south of New Zealand, then north toward the equator and on toward the Society Islands.
For simplicity we call Tahiti the finish point of the circumnavigation, although we may not actually close the circle there.
After the expedition ends we need to head immediately toward Russia, probably Vladivostok, or South Korea as a backup. That is another three months non-stop.
Right now we are in the middle of the Pacific, approaching French Polynesia from the equator.
On travely-family.com, under the Route tab, you can see our latest position and the track from the Rockstar Iridium 360 tracker provided by MVS Telecom.
Literally today we were supposed to close the circle by crossing our own track near Tahiti, but a band of calms is pushing the finish farther away. We hand-steer every mile just to make a little progress.
Our food stocks are sufficient for four or five months. Mostly dried fruit, nuts, tins, grains and pasta, sauces, jam and biscuits, flour and powdered milk, tea and medicinal herbs, honey and natural vitamin C.
Fresh food remaining: one pumpkin, two sweet potatoes, half a bucket of onions, one and a half heads of garlic, sixteen Tasmanian apples and ten coconuts from Suwarrow Atoll.
Including collected rainwater, we have about two hundred litres in the tanks and forty litres in bottles. It would be good to collect or take on another five hundred litres.
We have not yet used the hand-operated emergency watermaker. Under strict rationing the water is still sufficient.
Journalists on fire
Now, based on the facts above, judge the reports from federal television channels that our relatives forwarded to us :).
REN TV: “Australia and New Zealand Refused Assistance to a Yacht with Russians in Distress” 23 November 2021, 08:29 INDIAN OCEAN · RUSSIA · YACHTS · FAMILY Photo: instagram.com/travelyfamily.official
“The yacht Lady Mary, carrying a Russian family with two children, is in distress in the Indian Ocean. Australia and New Zealand have refused assistance to the Russians, REN TV reported on 23 November.
The Russians set out on a round-the-world voyage. Their fresh water is now running out and repairs are required, but foreign ports refuse to receive them.
Australia and New Zealand fear the family may be infected with coronavirus despite the fact that they have already been aboard for eleven weeks. The authorities will not agree to transfer water and food to the yacht. The vessel is currently heading toward French Polynesia.”
A message from our elder daughter: “Zvezda TV wrote from my words that you are returning home via Bulgaria; that you have been in self-isolation for seven days; that if necessary you will be picked up by helicopter, and something else along those lines.”
A message from Mum: “Everyone wants an interview about how badly things are going for you. They asked how to find Marina's sister Natalia Klochkova.” A note: Klochkov is Marina's husband's surname, not her father's.
Fortunately there are several journalists who either: a) simply chose not to run a story after learning that nobody needed to be rescued through the Foreign Ministry; or b) did their job properly and quickly contacted us directly through the website form.
Thank you for your professionalism.
Dear subscribers, thank you for the excellent comments forwarded by our shore team.
Hugs from a calm at 14° S, 151° W.
Thanks to our shore team — Dmitry K., Vyacheslav K., Alexander, Vasily V. and the owners of cards 7866 and 0013 — for supporting the expedition's morale through YooMoney and PayPal.
Your support is extremely valuable to us, friends.
May the world regain a human face, may the calm end and may Covid disappear.