At the Domodedovo airport I had a great meeting with Dr. Vladimir Galushin. We sat in a small cafe and chated away before I was called for my flight to Magadan.
This time I tried Transaero airline, which surprised me when they allowed me to pay for excess luggage by visa card. What a change compared to previous years.
I arrived to Magadan on Thursday, July 9th, 2009, about noon and was greeted my my friends. By 2 pm I had bought a new outboard (Yamaha 30) to replace my old Mariner 30 hp, which at the age of 13 started to leak oil out of the lower gear box.
At 3 pm I realised that I left my boat documents (technical compliance certificate, boat driving license) in Philadelphia. Evidently I took a wrong folder.
By 3-30 I had arranged delivery of the dox to a place in Oregon where a friend of my friend will pick it up and deliver to St. Petersburg.
By 4 pm I had re-register my boat (using photocopies of my originals).
At 4-30 I was with Irina Utekhina making plans for the sea trips. What was left to make us sea-worthy was the coast guard permission. Another trouble was the "Fisherman's Day" on the coming weekend.
Irina has shown her glamor photographs, suggesting that she was enjoying her directorship of the Magadan Nature Reserve. It so happened that my arrival coincided with the appointment of the new director of the reserve, Mr. Yuriy Berezhnoy. This makes Irina his vice-director.
On Friday, July 10, 2009 I was in the line at the coast guard headquarters. For some reason the border troops (I would call it the border army) consider the sea of Okhotsk as 'International' sea, but not internal waters of Russian Federation, and demand every inflatable boat to be registered with them. So I had to queue up in a prison-like 'reception' of the coast guard...
Irina has arranged a ride with the TV crew of the "Russia Today" program to the Zavialov island. The ride was not entirely free since we promised to put their operator and a bear (and naturally with the Steller's Sea Eagle) within 'operating range' of their TV camera. The only trouble was that all available ships were not willing to go to the sea anticipating the "Fisherman's day" celebration.
Now the first trip to the sea depends on the vodka drinking abilities of the captain and the crew....
Durning the weekend I was fitting the jet kit to our old Mariner 30 hp.
National Navy celebrations around the world are the same. I was once caught on Socorro Island in Mexico for some days while the sailors recovered from the celebrations
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