The voyage in 2000 along the Russian rivers Don and Volga

All the crew members for the first part of the journey had arrived to Rostov on June 26th. The ship was still in place, but some of the ropes had been stolen. Rats had eaten some of the equipments e.g. all the T-shirts had been delicious food for them. The ship was launched by manpower on the 27th of June. Again it leaked a lot but the leakage decreased in 24 hours. In the morning 29th of June we started the voyage. The ship had been registered as a Russian vessel to make things easier. On the 10th of July we arrived to Volgograd. A steady good southwest wind made the trip an easy sailing upstream the river Don and over the updamed artificial lakes. From Volgograd we started 14th of July downstream the river Volga. We had a steady southeast wind blowing against us. We rowed during the nights when the wind had ceased. On the 23 of July we arrived to Astrakhan. There is a more detailed report of our voyage in English, Spanish, Swedish, Finnish or Russia written by the captain Fredrik Koivusalo.

There is also a separate report (in Finnish) of the first half of the voyage, which is based on the notes of the crew member Topi Tapaila.

Crew (name, year of birth, nationality):

Baklanov Dmitry 80 RUS	Rantapää Petri 74 FIN (Some nice photos taken by Petri)
Duell Gustaf 71 SWE	Rigenkov Michael 61 RUS
Fokin Iliya 82 RUS	Rigkin Alexandr 86 RUS
Golovkin Sergei RUS	Smolevsky Alexandr 84 RUS
Grushenkov Vladimir 37 RUS	Smolevsky Juri 81 RUS
Hagieva Olesya 82 RUS	Suhorutchenkov Sergei 51 RUS
Inkinen Mikko 78 FIN	Suhorutchenkova Tatiana 80 RUS
Kabanov Anatoly 54 RUS	Suhonen Seppo 69 FIN
Koivusalo Fredrik 51 FIN(captain)	Tapaila Topi 62 FIN
Kosmigina Irina 71 RUS	Tihomirov Igor 80 RUS
Mannila Taina 76 FIN	Titova Olga 73 RUS
Pryazhevsky Max 81 RUS	Yrjänäinen Pentti 79 FIN

Sailing on Don (left) and rowing on Volga (above). It is crowded on board.

The crew on our Volga stage