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August 17th 2004
This day was nothing short of a nightmare, a
special cocktail of every kind practical problem blended with plenty of
useless waiting time. We woke up at the hotel and were sent to another hotel
for breakfast because our hotel was unable to meet this strange and unusual
demand. Once again we had some spare time to kill, so we went to The
Chukotka Museum in Anadyr. It was not much but they had a few interesting
items, among these an original painting from a Tsjeluskin team member and a
detailed map describing the last months of the Tsjeluskin’s voyage.
In the afternoon we went back across the bay to pick up our equipment
at the airport, the
wind still blowing as hell. We were relieved to find everything present and
in order. The simple Russian solution of loading an expedition on a ship is
to first load the kit onto a lorry and from here to the pilot boat,
travelling to the ship on the pilot boat just to discover that the waves was
to high to manage. The pilot must have been drunk or maybe this was he’s
first day on the job. Sailing back to Anadyr to reload all kit to a larger
tugboat and ones again back to the ship to climb onboard the ship. On top of
that, every little problem meant at least two hours of demoralizing waiting.
Another problem was the gas supply. When we finally
received oxygen there were only three 40 litre tanks at just 140 bars of
pressure. When we analyzed the tanks, only one of the three contained 100%
oxygen, the last two would not read more than approximately 90%, why we
instantly disqualified it as diving gas leaving us with 40 litres at 140
bars for the whole expedition. Why the research
vessel could not just pick us up at the harbour is still a mystery to us
unpractical Scandinavians, but it had likely something to do with a cranky
harbour master that had to demonstrate power by refusing entrance for the
vessel (just guessing). Oh yeah I forgot, of cause
it started pouring down as well, why we pulled out the flotation rescue
suits we use for RIB racing. This resulted in many envious glances from the
rest of the expedition members but unfortunately we only brought for our
selves.
The Anadyr bay is practically crawling with Beluga Wales and seals, we were
fortunate to see a lot of both, which made the long hours of waiting and
sailing a positive experience after all. When we
finally boarded The Lavrentyev research vessel it was almost midnight. We
gathered in the mess hall and had a small meal. At this point the expedition
was officially started with a formal ceremony filmed by Russian television.
One by one we had to present ourselves in front of the cameras, leaving the
impression that this was a little more than a normal dive trip. At the same
time we noticed that a young guy working with Oleg discretely was carrying a
pistol under his shirt. Funny enough he was casually introduced as Oleg’s
personal “assistant”, yeah right!
And just to
finish the day in proper Russian manner we discovered that the compressor of
the Lavrentyev had no filter what so ever and leaking oil as hell. The odds
of the expedition were honestly looking a bit weak at this moment. We
decided to sleep on the matter. |
