Historien om det ukrainske skib: "Bat'kivshchyna" fra:
 "The New York Times"

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July 3, 2000

Overdue, Unfunded, Ukraine's Ship Comes In

By ANDY NEWMAN

Keith Meyers/The New York Times

Sailors lined the deck of the carrier U.S.S. John F. Kennedy as it arrived in New York on Sunday for the OpSail celebration of tall ships on Monday.

Related Article • Coast Guard Choreographs Harbor's Biggest Gathering (July 3, 2000) Chart • A Tale of a Fateful Trip (July 3, 2000)

Vincent Laforet/The New York Times

The Bat'kivshchyna, a 90-foot metal-hulled former fishing trawler, will not be the largest ship in OpSail. But it may be the most persistent one, having overcome problems like running aground in the Dnieper River.

Vincent Laforet/The New York Times

Dmytro Biriukovich, captain of the ship Bat'kivshchyna from Ukraine, never lost faith that the ship would arrive for OpSail 2000.

ow do you say the name?" Sal Carr asked as he eased the motorboat through the Marine Basin Marina in Brooklyn Saturday evening and out into Gravesend Bay.

"Bat'kivshchyna," Taras Szczur said. "Bat-keev-SHIN-a."

Mr. Carr, a marina tenant who had agreed to take Mr. Szczur, the OpSail 2000 liaison to the schooner Bat'kivshchyna, on a reconnaissance ride around the harbor, tuned the radio to Channel 9.

"Ummm, Bak-ta-chinn-ee," he called out to every vessel within 50 miles. "Ukraine ship. Are you out there? Ukraine sail, are you out there? Are you out there?"

Mr. Carr released the talk button. "They don't have a cell phone?"

Actually they did. But it wasn't on. Or it wasn't working. Or -- come to think of it -- Mr. Szczur (pronounced shoor) recalled, "They were asking me for a battery charger right before they left Baltimore."

But no matter. The Bat'kivshchyna would arrive. The captain, Dmytro Biriukovich, would make sure of it. He had never lost faith, not when the ship ran aground in the Dnieper River a few days into the trip and lost a big chunk of its keel, as well as a toilet. Nor when storms in the Mediterranean shredded the mainsail.

Nor when the ship lost satellite phone service near Spain, nor when the radio gave up the ghost somewhere in the Atlantic, triggering a two-week oceanwide search by the Coast Guard. Nor when a mysterious problem, either with the winds or with reading the instructions for the Global Positioning System, caused the Bat'kivshchyna to miss the opening parade of OpSail 2000 in San Juan, Puerto Rico, by about 1,400 miles and end up in Norfolk, Va.

"It's normal seaman problem," the captain, a courtly 63-year-old in spotless whites and a skipper's hat, said on Wednesday as he stood on the deck in Baltimore. "I don't like to explain, 'Oh, how it was hard, waah waah waah.' I found this way. I have found it."

Tomorrow's grand Parade of Sail through New York Harbor will feature hundreds of the most imposing vessels on the planet, from a 371-foot Chilean barkentine to President Clinton's aircraft carrier.

And then there is the Bat'kivshchyna, the official, if utterly unfinanced, representative of Ukraine.

A floating testament to either the indomitability of the human spirit or the primacy of Murphy's Law, the Bat'kivshchyna, a 90-foot metal-hulled former fishing trawler dipped in cement and topped with two masts, left Kiev on April 7 with a crew of 15, counting the captain's wife and 14-year-old grandson. How it made it across the Atlantic is still unclear.

"In yachting life," Captain Biriukovich (beer-yoo-KOH-vich), a retired civil engineer, had philosophized in Baltimore, "some days bad and some days good. We forget bad and remember good."

The Bat'kivshchyna left Baltimore on Thursday for a 200-mile run to New York, a hop and a skip for a ship that had already covered 8,000 miles as the albatross flies. But though it was expected in Brooklyn midday Saturday afternoon, there was still no sign of it on Sunday afternoon.

Roy Kellogg, the captain's son-in-law, and (to his frequent chagrin these last three months) the Bat'kivshchyna's one-man land crew, was hardly surprised.

"This is how it is with them," said Mr. Kellogg, 46. "Everything is "Don't worry, be happy.' My father-in-law and his Jamaican attitude."

When OpSail's organizers were putting the event together, they sent invitations to dozens of foreign governments. In January they began getting calls from a man who wanted to teach the world about the wonders of Ukraine from aboard a boat he had built called Bat'kivshchyna. (It means "motherland.")

"We didn't know they existed," said Alma Viator, OpSail 2000's director of international and government affairs. "They were not on my radar screen."

At least she has a radar screen. The Bat'kivshchyna had no radar, virtually no communication equipment, and no corporation or nonprofit foundation willing to sponsor it. Asking the Ukrainian government for a handout was out of the question.

"We have many problems now in our country," Captain Biriukovich said. "We must give assistance, not ask for it."

After several months and a trip to the United States, he had raised about $5,500, mostly from OpSail itself, about a tenth of what a voyage of this magnitude typically costs. (Donors and sponsors may send e-mail messages to Cfue@webtv.net.)

To make ends meet, the Bat'kivshchyna turns into a gift shop when it hits port, doing a brisk business in "McLenin" T-shirts, fake fur hats, hand-lacquered refrigerator magnets, and nesting wooden dolls of President Clinton containing Monica Lewinsky containing Paula Jones containing the first lady containing a cigar.

Besides the cash flow problems, the Ukrainians found the State Department leery of issuing entry visas, given the many Ukrainians who come here as visitors and forget to leave.

But Captain Biriukovich was not to be deterred. On April 7, to a hero's send-off and much news media attention, the Bat'kivshchyna set sail from Kiev, the first boat of the season to test the ice-clogged Dnieper River. The next day, Captain Biriukovich's house was burglarized.

On Day 7, the boat slammed aground when the helmsman fell asleep at the wheel. Minus a piece of its keel, Bat'kivshchyna soldiered on.

"It looks not so pretty," a crew member, Sergei Sklonchak, said of the black-hulled gaff-rigged boat, "but it is very strong. It has big, heavy metal body. Like a tank."

The mishaps continued. There was a near-international incident in Turkey, after the Ukrainian Coast Guard sank a Turkish fishing ship it said had been poaching in Ukraine waters, and the Turks vowed revenge. Keen to avoid Turkish gunfire, the Bat'kivshchyna slipped through the Bosporus in the dead of night. There were storms in the Mediterranean so severe that a crew member jumped ship in Cádiz, Spain.

Now the communication problems began. The ship's satellite phone stopped working after the phone company was sold and the customers were not automatically switched over. And on May 13, shortly after the ship transmitted a position 250 miles west of the Canary Islands, the radio went dead.

The seafaring community feared the worst. The Coast Guard sent search planes clear to Africa. The first in a series of OpSail events opened in San Juan, Puerto Rico, without the Bat'kivshchyna.

In the mid-Atlantic, Captain Biriukovich, cut off from the world, made a decision. The seas were freakishly calm, and he was running low on fuel. He would skip Puerto Rico and Miami and make a beeline for Norfolk.

At least that was the official story. Several crew members said that in fact, someone on board had set the Global Positioning System to take a reading off a European satellite rather than off an American satellite, with disorienting results.

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"We thought we went to the south," said Katya Dvornichenko, 21, the only woman in the crew other than the captain's wife, Nina. "When we met another ship and we took coordinates from him, he told us that we were 1,000 miles north. There was some joking that we will go to Greenlandia and that we will see some icebergs."

There was disappointment.

"We missed Puerto Rico, which was my dream," said Gena Vovk, 24, who runs the souvenir concession. "We missed Miami, place of my dreams. We can sell everything in Miami."

But on June 6, navigating without radar in heavy fog, the Bat'kivshchyna pulled into Norfolk. It was either 17 days late for the start of OpSail or 8 days early for the festivities in Norfolk.

It did not matter. They were an immediate hit, and Virginians fell over themselves to help them. One man took a 55-gallon drum of diesel fuel from his backyard down to the dock. After a local minister told his flock that the Ukrainians were short on provisions, the ship took on so much food that the crew worried it would sink.

``The Ukrainian souvenirs are selling well, and the crew is cleaning, scraping and painting the ship with the assistance of the CT11 Marine Institute of Norfolk Boat Camp for Male Juvenile Offenders,'' Mike Lamperelli, the administrator of Connecticut Friends of Ukraine Expedition, wrote in an e-mail message to the ship's supporters.

Baltimore brought more of the same. People gave the crew with coolers of beer, cartons of cigarettes.

Visitors to the ship were greeted by a crew member in billowy red pants, a blue velour vest, a pirate-sized ear hoop and a long blond mohawk. He played the accordion. The man, Petro Vashchyk, 53, explained that he was portraying a Cossack, though he was actually an editor for a Ukrainian television show.

Tourists crowded around the placards depicting nearly three thousand years of Ukrainian history and the beauties of the countryside and the Black Sea.

``We are discovering America, and America is discovering us,'' Captain Biriukovich said.

On Thursday, the Bat'kivshchyna pulled anchor and headed east, bound for the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal and then the ocean. Late yesterday afternoon, Mr. Kellogg said he suspected that the captain was doing some more discovering.

"I wouldn't be surprised if he was just sailing around the harbor looking at New York City," Mr. Kellogg said. "That's something my mother-in-law always wanted to do."

Then at 6:20 p.m. yesterday, the sky-blue and wheat-yellow Ukrainian flag appeared above the waters of Gravesend Bay. The Bat'kivshchyna had arrived.

Captain Biriukovich, looking very refreshed, explained that he and the crew had stayed with friends in Chesapeake City, Md., for two days.

"We were not in a hurry," he said. "We have breakfast and we have lunch and we have dinner there.

"It was wonderful," he added, giving two thumbs up.

Her er en artikel jeg fandt på Internettet om Bat'kivshchyna's tur over Atlanten

The Discover Ukraine Expedition

The expeditions aim is to arouse interest in Ukraine as an independent European country. A country of 50 million with it's own cultural identity, a country worth visiting, a country worth investing in, a country with a rich and interesting history. Ukraine is similar in size to France but so few in the world know about this country. The Captain wants to inform all that Ukraine is no longer part of the Soviet Union or is part of the Russian Federation!

The expedition began due to frustration caused to the Captain. He had been sailing for several years in the Mediterranean Sea ever since perestroika to show Ukrainians who could not afford to travel a little of the rest of Europe. No matter where he docked he was always asked, "What country is that blue and yellow Flag from"? When he replied "Ukraine" then next question was "Where's that"?

In the summer of 1999 he attended a large regatta in El-Ferrol, Spain off the southern coast of England. He sailed with twenty-five Ukrainians for six weeks just to reach the event. They took with him a small display about Ukraine. All the guests enjoyed learning about Ukraine. The ship and its display were so warmly received that soon after invitations from festivals all over the world arrived.

When invitations arrived from the United States of America to attend the largest maritime event in History OpSail 2000 the organizers all wanted to know if we would be bringing the display about Ukraine. News seemed to travel real fast because the ship had only been back in Kyiv a week when the first invitations to OpSail 2000 arrived.

The Captain thought that there would never be a better opportunity to promote the country he loves so he created the "Discover Ukraine" display and started planning the expedition.

Captain Biriukovich had no funds or sponsors to pay for the expedition but plenty of potential crewmembers who agreed to work all winter long to prepare the ship. The Captain went from company to company to seek sponsorship to no avail. With only a few weeks before departure finally some funds were promised so final preparations where made.

The ship had received some funds from Wilmington, DE, which was a Tall Ship 2000 port, and they had contacted a Diaspora group to greet the ship. Then additional funds came from OpSail headquarters and a couple ports.

The ship had several equipment failures and lost all communications 100 miles west of the Canaries. There were no winds in the Atlantic and due to a GPS error the ship ended up severely off course and missed the first two OpSail 2000 ports.

They crossed the Atlantic with no radar, radio, satellite beacon or communications of any kind. They arrived in Norfolk, Virginia the largest navel base in the world with still no communications or radar on one of the foggiest morning that city had seen in many years.

The citizens of Norfolk fell in love with the ship and its crew. The Tide Water Cultural Association was overjoyed to assist the ships and hosted the first American backyard barbecue they had ever attended. The TUCA members were of tremendous assistance in many areas.

Bat'kivshchyna and the Larinda a replica ship from Cape Cod Massachusetts were going to be docked not a downtown Norfolk but further down the Inter-coastal waterway at "Great Bridge Chesapeake". It was a very humid day but thousands came out to greet Bat'kivshchyna and all the guests had one Ukrainian flag and one American flag in each hand to greet the ships.

 The Captain was so overjoyed regarding his first port and wondered how the rest of the ports would greet them. Bat'kivshchyna participation in OpSail 2000 and Tall Ship 2000 just got better and better as we sailed up the East coast of North America. Ukraine got so much recognition and the ship made headline after headlines. The media attention the ship got was so positive that all where overjoyed. Then like always the newspapers always make one or two errors or misquote people but everyone took that in stride.

Bat'kivshchyna visited Wilmington, DE, Baltimore, Maryland, New York, NY, New London, CT, Halifax, Nova Scotia; Portland, Maine then sailed back south to celebrate Ukrainian Independence Day in Philadelphia before wintering in Norwich CT.

We would like to thank all the wonderful people who assisted us during OpSail 2000 and Tall Ship 2000 Great Lakes Challenge etc. but there is not enough room to thank all who assisted and we are afraid to leave someone off the list so "Thank You All"!!

Her er endnu en artikel jeg fandt på Internettet om

Bat`kivshchyna
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Click on image for a larger view of this line drawing by Dan Bailey.

The Bat'kivshchyna [bat-keef-SHCHYN-a] is a gaff-rigged schooner registered in the Ukraine. Salvaged by Dmytro Biryukovich [beer-you-KOH-vich], the steel-hull Soviet-era fishing boat was repaired, reinforced with ferro-cement, and completely refurbished in 1991. The inside of the vessel was reworked in order to create a captain's cabin, combined kitchen, crew's mess and staterooms, and a smaller crew's quarters. Captain Biryukovich and a large number of volunteers accomplished almost all the work. The vessel is 96 feet long (over all), has a beam of 17 feet, and draws 10 feet of water. She weighs 80 tons. The masts reach 65 feet above the waterline.

It was the captain's dream to create a greater awareness of the opportunities that exist in the Ukraine for trade and commerce. At each port along the way, he would set up his "Discover Ukraine" displays and talk about the country he loves. Further, the captain has formed a partnership for the summer with the Children of Chornobyl Relief Fund. Most of the money raised this summer will go to help the Ukrainian children who suffer from the effects of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster.

In the fall of 1999, preparations got underway for a departure from his homeport of Kiev to the United States, where the Bat'kivshchyna would participate in both Tall Ships 2000® and OpSail2000 events. However, the scheduled departure of 1 April was delayed until 7 April because ice still remained in the Dnieper River. In order to stay on schedule, the Bat'kivshchyna departed with a volunteer crew of 16 before the river authorities had a chance to map and mark the shifting channels and the ship ran aground a number of times before reaching the Black Sea. Often stranded momentarily along remote, uninhabited stretches of the river with no assistance in sight, the crew would all gather on the bowsprit and rock the ship loose. Once beyond the Dnieper, the ship transited the Dardenelles and Straits of Bosphorus in Turkey, crossed the Aegean and Mediterranean seas, passed through the Straits of Gibraltar and entered the port of Cadiz, Spain, to provision for the Atlantic crossing.

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They left Cadiz for a 15 May landfall in Puerto Rico. Shortly after leaving Spain, it became obvious that they would not reach Puerto Rico in time to participate in the OpSail2000 activities there and Captain Biryukovich altered course for Norfolk, Virginia. At about this same time, the ship lost both HF and satellite communications, and the ship and crew, for all practical purposes, disappeared from the world's radar. For several days, friends, family, supporters and US Coast Guard held their collective breath until the captain managed to get a message to a passing ship that all was well aboard the Bat'kivshchyna and that they anticipated arriving in Norfolk around the 6th of June.

Arrival in Norfolk was right on schedule, and from there the Bat'kivshchyna went on to participate in OpSail2000 activities in Hampton Yards, Virginia; Wilmington, Delaware; Baltimore, Maryland; New York City; New London, Connecticut; Halifax, Nova Scotia; and Portland, Maine. In fact, the ship became the darling of the OpSail events. In addition to assistance from many Ukrainian-American organizations, additional support was provided by numerous volunteers, who were impressed with the "can do" attitude of the ship, captain and crew. Almost all expenses and materials had to come from donated money, services and supplies.

Having accomplished the first phase of his "Discover Ukraine" objective to promote his newly independent country, the captain returned to New London and started looking around for a place to spend the winter. Dry dock repairs were provided by the Thames River Shipyard in New London and the Bat'kivshchyna accepted an invitation to winter over in Norwich, CT.

Plans and preparations for the second phase of the captain's plan -- to join the ASTA activities in the Great Lakes -- are in full swing. The Bat'kivshchyna intends to visit Rochester, New York; Kingston, Ontario; Port Colborne, Ontario; Buffalo, New York; Cleveland, Ohio; Detroit, Bay City, and Muskegon, Michigan; and Chicago, Illinois. The ship and crew will depart Norwich in late May, pay a courtesy visit to the Governor of Connecticut in Hartford, and continue to New York City where they will enter the Hudson River and proceed to - and through - the Erie Canal into Lake Ontario. (A design feature of the Bat'kivshchyna - the masts are hinged at the base and can be laid down on the deck - will enable the ship to clear the low bridges in the canal system.)

Captain Biryukovich plans to leave the Great Lakes via the Illinois Waterway and the Mississippi River. Phase three of the "Discover Ukraine" plan will take the Bat'kivshchyna into the Caribbean, through the Panama Canal and on to the US West Coast for next year's tall-ship activities.

Photo and information courtesy of www.tallshipnewswire.com

Return to the Tall Ships Challenge^® Muskegon ships index.

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Links til internettet om Bat'kivshchyna

• Captain Dmytro Birioukovych and his "Bat'kivshchyna": interview
• 4th of July OpSail Bat’kivshchyna -- Digital photos contributed ...
• Schooner Bat'kivshchyna - Kiev, Ukraine
• http://www.batkivshchyna.net