Batkivschyna captain faces hardship but is undeterred in original quest (08/22/04)

Batkivschyna captain faces hardship but is undeterred in original quest

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - It took Mother Nature to bring the extraordinary and determined voyage of the black-bottomed Ukrainian schooner, the Batkivschyna to a halt off the Australian seacoast in early summer. Winds and waves did what broken communications and navigational gear could not in the four years the sailing vessel has pursued its project to inform the world about Ukraine.

Now the daunting task of raising several tens of thousands of dollars stands between Discover Ukraine, the transglobal project the schooner has been executing, and the completion of the around-the-world voyage - the long-held dream of Captain Dmytro Biriukovich. The captain said he remained optimistic.

"We'll find the money, it'll just take some time," explained the 68-year-old Mr. Biriukovich in July in his apartment back in Kyiv, where he and his wife, who is also his first mate, returned at the beginning of June to rest and regroup after a harried experience in trying to reach the Australian coast.

The 28-meeter, concrete-hull sailing vessel, which had aroused so much interests on both coasts of the United States during its stay there several years ago on its way around the world, sustained extensive damage to its main mast and its sails when it encountered not one but two violent storms as it attempted to cross the treacherous Cook Straits on its way to Australia in early March.

While gale force winds exceeding 70 miles per hour and 20-foot swells were the primary reason the vessel barely managed to limp into port in Sydney, a no lesser contributing factor was the lack of an experienced crew, the bane of Captain Biriukovich since he left Ukraine for his voyage in the spring of 2000.

As the winds gusted and the water in the channel churned, Captain Biriukovich tried to bark orders to his crew of five - two Americans, a German, a Russian and a Swiss citizen - all first-time sailors he had found at a hostel in New Zealand, who were originally on a backpacking excursion.

"The sails should have been riffed but the crew were first-time sailors and they had a hard time lighting the stove much less riffing a sail," explained the captain. "They really didn't have a clue."

After limping into Sydney harbor, the captain was confronted by more problems. At first he could not find docking and was forced to cruise the harbor for quite some time before one firm allowed the Batkivschyna to drop anchor off shore. Then the people he had expected to help his project through its Australian stage did not come through as the captain had expected.

Captain Biriukovich said he found that diaspora and expatriate Ukrainians who had so eagerly helped the project move forward over the last four years were not so accommodating in Australia. He had expected help from the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organizations. However, after initially agreeing to offer support, the organization never provided the Batkivschyna and the Discover Ukraine project vital support. In fact, according to the captain, only two Ukrainian Australians even bothered to come out to the boat.

Mr. Biriukovich said that he only now realized just how unusually helpful and giving Ukrainian Americans and Americans in general had been as the Discover Ukraine project, with its placards, stands, souvenirs and information on Ukraine had traveled through the Western Hemisphere.

It was a trip that had begun in March 2000 when the Batkivschyna left Kyiv on a rainy and cold late winter morning and headed down the Dnipro River out into the Black Sea and through the Bosporus into the Mediterranean. Then it moved through the Straits of Gibraltar and into the Atlantic Ocean before "the little schooner that could," as some would later dub it, reached Norfolk, Va., in June - a little late and a little worse for wear. Its voyage was already considered headline news, the boat having become lost in the Atlantic after losing its communication and navigational capabilities due to technical problems soon after it entered the Atlantic. On the Dnipro it had also lost a toilet, when it hit a sandbar while someone was "aboard."

It managed to become the star of Operation Sail 2000, the Millennium homage to sailing and the largest gathering of sailing vessels ever, after The New York Times ran a front page story on the ship's travails on the Fourth of July, the day Operation Sail entered New York Harbor with President Bill Clinton on the reviewing stand.

Afterwards, the celebrity vessel and its crew continued into the Great Lakes, down the Mississippi and into the Gulf of Mexico before cruising the Caribbean. After passing through the Panama Canal in the spring of 2002, the Batkivschyna made a run up the California coast and on to Vancouver, British Columbia, before moving southward again. It wintered in southern California and headed westward once more, this time to Hawaii.

All the while it encountered huge crowds as it took part in several international sailing regattas and festivals. While the Ukrainian American community proved crucial to the project in achieving its essential goal - to let the world know about Ukraine, its people, its history and its potential - at all the ports of call, whether in Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, San Diego, or Honolulu, Americans with no attachment to the project played key roles as well, providing winter harbor, renovation costs and shelter for the crew and its captain.

In Hawaii, where they arrived last summer, misfortune continued to track the crew, this time when they were not allowed to enter port in Honolulu because their American visas were deemed expired after American Customs in California had improperly stamped them. It took the efforts of the office of a Hawaiian senator to straighten out the latest mess.

By the fall of 2003 the fourth leg of what was imagined as a five-stage excursion of the Discover Ukraine project began when the Batkivschyna left Hawaii, heading for the legendary South Seas islands, discovered by Captain James Cook in the 18th century and made famous by the painter Paul Gauguin, who in the 19th century left his family to live in Tahiti.

The Batkivschyna made stops at Christmas Island, part of the Republic of Kiribati, and three of the 15 Cook Islands. On one of the islands they were invited to an elementary school to give a presentation on Ukraine.

After reaching the northern New Zealand town of Opua, they met with New Zealand Member of Parliament Brian Donnelly. Captain Biriukovich claimed that after their meeting Mr. Donnelly told him he was "astonished at how little he had known about Ukraine." Then it was on to the New Zealand cities of Grisborn, Christchurch, Wellington and Lyttletown, and their rendezvous with mother nature in all her fury - but not before a party-loving New Zealander rammed the Batkivschyna in a late night encounter in the harbor of Auckland, the country's largest city.

The captain explained that his vessel did not carry insurance, which could have been another insurmountable obstacle to the completion of the project. However, the captain of the sailing craft that had rammed the Batkivschyna provided a private dry dock and parts, and helped to repair the ship.

It was at this juncture that the original crew from Ukraine, which Captain Biriukovich had hired and brought to Hawaii, abandoned him. Two students from the Maritime Academy in Kyiv left as had been agreed upon, but two other experienced sailors who said they'd had their share of sailing for now, asked for their passports, telling Mr. Biriukovich, who retained responsibility for them while in port, that they had found sponsors to fly them back to Ukraine. The two Ukrainian sailors then spent some time in New Zealand illegally before asking for emergency aid from the government, claiming that Captain Biriukovich had abandoned them when he left for Australia, and receiving airline tickets to Ukraine courtesy of the New Zealand government.

"This is the type of problems I had with crews from the start of this voyage," explained Mr. Biriukovich, who said that he will demand that his last crew of this project, if it does indeed go forward, stay with him until the Batkivschyna returns to Kyiv.

However, that will happen only if additional funding is found for the sailing vessel and the project. Currently the Batkivschyna is docked in Sydney in a port being paid for by a friend of the Biriukovich family at $600 a month. Mr. Biriukovich returned with his wife to Kyiv with the help of a benefactor from Long Island, Calif., who had previously helped to find and pay for winter docking in California.

Now the captain must not only find the finances to fill his sails to complete his voyage but he must fix them first as well as the mast upon which they hang. He reckons he needs about $100,000 to get his schooner seaworthy and to complete the Discover Ukraine project.

His plans call for the voyage to continue to South Africa and around the Cape of Hope, across the Atlantic to the coast of South America and then back into North America before finally transversing the Atlantic Ocean once again and sailing on toward the European continent.

He has approached several well-to-do Ukrainians, including National Deputy Leonid Kravchuk, the country's first president, and National Deputy Anatolii Matvienko, both of whom have foundations that support just such endeavors. He has been rebuffed and told that the problem right now is that all eyes and finances are on the presidential elections. Mr. Biriukovich is hoping that once the race for the presidential seat is over, he will obtain the aid he is seeking.

While retaining a sense of optimism, Mr. Biriukovich, nonetheless is a person grounded in reality. He said that if he does not find a sponsor he would leave the Batkivschyna to his friend who is currently paying port costs, with the directive that he can do with it as he pleases.

"I think that the schooner will die there in that case and he will bury it because no one is going to buy it," commented Captain Biriukovich.

| Home Page |