Fifty The Hard Way

This is a photo of Viktor Yazykov’s new Open 50 boat designed by Owen/Clarke. The boat was just delivered to Sochi to have the same crew who worked on Viktor’s previous Open 40 boat complete this new speedy craft and properly launch her, with the canting keel attached and the mast built and installed. There are many sides to this story, but in short the incomplete boat had to be delivered under motor across two seas, with the keel and its mechanism stowed inside the vessel. Viktor’s brother Anatoly, who also was involved with the Open 40’s construction, spent the last month working hard in preparing the boat-building shop for this new projects, to complete the boat, build her a mast, and launch her in Sochi. Although initially the boat was going to be motored home the crew managed to install a short mast and used old sails to assist the diesel.

Viktor says that the way home “was nice, but not always easy.” They had a badly leaking daggerboard case with water slowly coming even into the engine compartment. They have decided to have a temporary daggerboard installed for the delivery to improve the boat’s tracking. The daggerboard trunk started to leak right from the time the boat got to the water but they did manage to fix it by the time the boat left for Sochi.

The engine stopped working just few hours away from the departure due to someone installing a used fuel filter and not doing a proper job done on the fuel line. The propeller was not tightly fixed to the shaft, which gave the crew some more troubles. For some reason the engine did not always work well because of the poor fuel supply, the crew could not find the reason, so they could not run it at full power. The last few miles were really troubling.

Before the departure the crew fixed a ten meter temporary mast (an old aluminum flagpole) and cut two foresails out of the junked huge staysail, that they have been lucky to find around the shop. The fin keel 700 kg, 4.3 m long (made in NZ) was placed below the cockpit through the transom. One and a half tons of lead together with the weight of the fin keel gave a good stability to the boat. A single temporary rudder and a daggerboard, a coach roof out of plywood, bilge pump, navlights and lots of other things took lots of work and about 20,000 Euro. The weather was very hot before the departure, so they started to work early in the day and had a few hours brake after one o'clock to then continue working till the sunset.

A huge additional load of worries and work was placed on Viktor due to the amount of paperwork for the customs, harbormaster and so on. From the beginning Viktor understood that there was no way to get a permit to sail an uncompleted boat such a long way (about 1,700 nm). Again they have been lucky with a local marine agent who took care of the customs and harbormaster papers and many other things. Viktor says that he has never been so exhausted, mostly from the psychological load of handling many difficult tasks at once. The preparations took more than one month altogether. Early morning swimming and exercise helped a lot, otherwise he would not survived, says Viktor.

It was really great to be at sea again and, most remarkable, along the way they met with a 69 year old man from Russia, Eugeniy Gvozdev, who just completed his second circumnavigation, this time in a boat 3.7 m long. They gave him a tow through the Bosphorus and then to Sochi. It was a great experience to have long conversations about cruising and seamanship with him during this trip. They also have been lucky with the weather and carried following winds almost all the time, particularly in the Black Sea, which allowed them to use the sails and avoid running out of fuel because of the additional load of towing.

Now it is done, the boat is finally home, the sponsors can see what they have been paying for, and we can talk about boat building again.

Solo