Baltic to Black sea.

[col1]

Has any adventurers out there sailed from the Baltic ( Latvia ) to the Black sea (Turkey) of recentI if so by what route and size of craft . And problems with the usual officialdom if any? And the best time of year for this passage.<span style="color:blue"> </span>

 

[Sgeir]

I seem to remember reading a short series of articles, perhaps about 5 years ago, about people who took a boat (probably a small yacht) from from western Europe to the Black Sea via the Danube etc. Might have been in the Cruising Association magazine.

 

[Aja]

Of course a real adventurer did it in a trimaran in the middle of at least one winter........

"The Improbable Voyage is the astonishing account of Tristan Jones' 2,307-mile voyage across Europe in an ocean-going trimaran. Continuing the story begun in OUTWARD LEG, Tristan tells of his round-the-world voyage whose purpose is to show the world that physical disability need not preclude a life of adventure and challenge.

Having half-recovered in an Amsterdam hospital from broken ribs and a collapsed lung, Tristan, together with his crew, sets off up the Rhine and experiences the most severe winter known in Europe for many years. Battling ice and cold, petty-minded bureaucrats and customs officials, Bulgarian gun-boats and Romanian frontier police, he charts his hazardous course up the Rhine and down the Danube. Flying the Red Ensign, the Stars and Stripes, and the Red Dragon of Wales, Tristan sails his indomitable way through Holland, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania and Bulgaria to emerge triumphant, if penniless, in the Black Sea where for the first time in forty-five years of seafaring he is invited to dine in an Officers' Mess, aboard HMS NAIAD.

But it is the people from all walks of life whom Tristan meets on this unlikely voyage and the adventures, both hilarious and daunting, that he and his crew experience along the way, that form the substance of a book that will warm the hearts of the ever-increasing number of devotees of this rare Welsh sailor and writer......"



The great Tristan Jones /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

Donald

 

[jenku]

There was a guy who did UK-Black Sea by rivers and canals int he 1990ies, in a Mirror Dinghy. He did not have too much problem with paperwork, so it cannot be that bad today, even easier with the Danube states now all being EU (OK not Serbia, but the rest).

Don't remember the name now but I have the book. Mac-something. Macinnon?

 

[chrisc]

I was looking at a 10.6 steel boat in holland about a month ago ,this boat had gone down the danube to the black sea and back up the rhone. had a 83hp motor if i remember.for sale because owners wife was to infirm.
So it is quite practicle to do this trip ,propobally not possible to go the other way (black sea to germany) without a very powerful vessel.

 

[Nickel]

I think there is a navigable route from St Petersburg down through the rivers and canals of Russia [and Ukraine?] to the Black Sea. Would be a fantatstic trip, but I don't of anyone who has done it?

If you do it, you'll probably have a book in you by the end of it?! But post edited highlights here first, okay? /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

 

[Twister_Ken]

Wasn't there an Irish boat that did something like this, then sank somewhere daft, a few miles away from its home port? Maybe that was St Petersburg to Moscow?

It's also been done (on telly) by a replica Viking longship.

 

[DavidMcMullan]

The book was by Wallace Clark, called Sailing Through Russia. Journey in 1992 from White Sea.