Kamchatka

June 18, 2013

Promptly after we had been delivered by Olga to the boat chartered by Kamchatka Shipping Company, the trip started. We believe that Olga had to awake us to get out of the car.

The idea was born to visit Kamchatka Shipping Company, since Spliethoff had sold two A-type vessels to them but no one of our company had ever paid a visit to them. The sale was concluded via a broker in Singapore.

We were welcomed by the General Manager Sergey Akhromeev, by his Deputy Aleksey Maslov, by Head of Legal Department Irina Kidanova and by some other guests. On board was also the Owner and Captain of he boat, a diver and a cook.

The table was stacked with food, from cheese to Kaviar and last but not least by bottles of Vodka. It was indeed a very nice and warm welcome to us.

Harry and Olga

Once we really were awake again -believe the Vodka helped a lot- it became a very nice tour.

First we headed to the Kamchatkan Needles, locally called “the three brothers”. Has any Solent sailor even known about these Needles, let alone visited them?

Then we headed for Maria Island (Tasmania), at least this was my instant thought. What do you think Boj, Francois, Reima, Frank, Pieter, Joost D and Marjolein?

We had to comply wit a local habit and that was to put some coins into a rock.

The diver had to do his job and came back with a net full of fish and lobsters. The cook started immediately. In the meantime we had some discussion about our joint interest in life i.e. shipping, but I will deal with these details in another forum than this webpage. In short I can say here that Kamchatka Shipping Company and Spliethoff could possibly be good partners in the future. Consider myself as an ambassador to bring two parties closer to each other. Being each on another side of the world, we hardly ever could become competitors.

The fresh fish and lobsters were delicious.

The richly poored Vodka was the cream on the ice. I have invited Sergey to Amsterdam one day in return. Urs did the same in connection with Locarno.

We must have fallen asleep right away after Olga organised the car to bring us back to the hotel.

The next day Olga picked us up at the end of the morning for an official visit to their office.

Thereafter we went for a museum visit. Now at least we know all about Herrn Bering, a German. One of the first explorers of this area incl the -now called- Bering Street.

The area is beautiful, full with vulcano’s of which 29 are still active, 140.000 lakes and rivers.
Kamchatka is 270.000 km2 thus 6 times as big as The Netherlands but has only 300.000 inhabitants (plus some bears). Now the summer started but as from September it can be bitterly cold. Guess more or less comparable to Finland. Short and nice summers, but long and severe winters. Agree Oili/Reima?

We would have liked to spend another day here, but our rigid schedule does not give any room for extra days, so we had to say good bye to Irina and Olga at a well known statue.

We left with many presents, so let us see what the USA Border control at Anchorage AK thinks of it.

Anyone who loves nature should consider Kamchatka, but be aware of the bears. We learned some quite ugly stories about accidents which happened recently to locals. Otto a fantastic area for you but I recommend a shorter flight i.e. Amsterdam-Moscow-Kamchatka.

Will be continued very soon, because I have a back log now,