Wandering Camera

Album 246
(Translated b
y Polina Korchagina)

 

 Different ships - sailing ships, yachts, motor ships arrive in St. Petersburg for the celebration. Looking through the pictures I shot these days, I realized that they were enough to make a subject album. However, before moving on I would like to finish with the water show and festival that took place on the 31st of May.

 

On the 31st of May after the parade of orchestras about which I told you in the previous album, the water show with fireworks and laser show should have been repeated (by analogy with 27th of May).
On the same day different eminent guests (presidents and prime ministers from the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States, Europe, USA) arrived. It's evident, that the repetition was for them too.But it turned out even more interesting:

Around 3 pm a very large part of the city center was cordoned off by the police and domestic forces. So you couldn't get close to the Neva River between Troitskii bridge and the bridge of Lieutenant Schmidt, not even for a kilometer. They stopped people at the Novaya Golandia, Moika, Mihailovskii Castle.

So everything that was shown (according to the live broadcast it was very beautiful) was shown only for presidents, journalists and "elite".

If you happened to watch it you could see that the quays of Neva, the beach of the Peter and Paul fortress complex, bridges and Strelka were deserted.

Why don't they fence in a piece of quay for the guests? Even I who have lived in Russia the whole life was puzzled. Around ten thousand people wandered around the cordons. They couldn't believe that the center of the city is closed for them. The cordon was removed around 4 o'clock in the morning.

The screenshots of the live broadcasting. St Petersburg TV. The upper picture is about the water show, the lower one is about the laser show. As for live broadcasting of ballet and fireworks in Petergof it was almost the same: the park was inaccessible for common people.

Enough about the sad things.
Let's go back to the promised sailing ships.

In the picture you can see a training ship "Nadezhda" (Hope) that is making a circumnavigation and now is moored near the Lieutenant Schmidt quay.
The sailing ship belongs to the Far-Eastern State Naval University and represents Vladivostok city during the St. Petersburg three-hundredth anniversary.

Its length - 109.4 meters
Width - 14 meters
The height of the mainmast above the water line - 49,6 meters
The crew - 199

"Yunii baltiets"(St Petersburg ) is a rather small training ship. It is moored near "Nadezhda"

"Yunii baltiets" belongs to the "Palace for Children Creative work" (translator's note: Palaces for Children Creative work or Pioneer Homes (in the USSR times) are state organizations, a complexes of different craft societies)

The celebrations don't disturb fishing :)
On the 25th and 26th of May I with my friends was invited to the sailing ship "Khersones", that was moored near the Port arrival and departure building in the Harbour.

Another ship was moored there. 25th of May it had a name "ASTORIA"...

...but 27th it was renamed "ASTOR". Should note, that on the other side of it, the inscription also changed.

Quoting Sherlock Holmes in the "Hound of Baskervilles" (russian version of the movie):

"One should only start studying family portraits and he will believe in transmigration" : )
(translator's note: the quotation is translated)

However, later I've learned that it was the different ships :)

((Thanks to Vitaly Lunev for the photo)

The River bank landscape looks like a Northern one
This is the "Khersones".

Its length is 109 meters.

My visit to this ship was connected with the display of photos. The Germans, who seemed to rent the ship organized a kind of a meeting between German and Russian businessmen/intellectuals, wanted to show the photos by a video projector.
The vessel in spite of being a sailing ship, was equipped with very modern equipment. It had several locators.

But the ropes were pulled by people's hands, not by machines.

In the background you can see a church on the Gutuevskii island.


By the way, it's interesting that you can't approach the ships moored at the Port arrival and departure building because it's a frontier zone there. You should give your foreign passport to a customs official and he hands you a book that gives you a "right to be in the frontier zone"
Well, you feel almost abroad : )

The sailing ship "Khersones" belongs to Ukraine, its home port is Kerch.
The crew is mainly Ukrainian as far as I can judge.
Looks like the open sea : )

The wind in the Harbour is quite perceptible


Later on I'll show you some of the famous buildings that were restored

 

 

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