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Russian Ocean Way travelers leave Socotra for East Africa

The 670-mile journey will take seven days

TOMSK, April 17. /TASS/. Russian travelers making a round-the-world voyage along the routes once explored by Russia’s sea-farers, Russian Ocean Way, have left Socotra Island in the northwest of the Indian Ocean (Yemen) and are heading for Djibouti (East Africa), the press service of the expedition has told TASS.

Earlier, the travelers stopped on the island, as their captain Stanislav Beryozkin needed emergency aid. Now his life is not at risk.

"We lifted the anchor at a.m. 9:40 Moscow time (6:40 a.m. GMT) on April 17. We are going to Djibouti. The 670-mile journey will take seven days. Now we keep a speed of 4.5 knots," the message quotes the head of the expedition Yevgeny Kovalevsky as saying.

The travelers decided to follow the route from the Socotra Island to Djibouti. It crosses the Gulf of Aden towards the Red Sea, where the current situation is uneasy due to attacks by Somalian pirates and Houthi rebels on peaceful merchant ships.

"We have received notification from the [Russian] Foreign Ministry that no one could guarantee the Russian Ocean Way vessel's safety in such an environment. But the crew has made a decision to continue. They say they do feel certain fears and wish to move forward without wasting time," Yulia Kalyuzhnaya, the head of the expedition's shore-based headquarters and executive director of the Tomsk branch of the Russian Geographical Society, is quoted as saying.

Russian Ocean Way voyage

The team’s leader, Yevgeny Kovalevsky (of Tomsk) and its captain Stanislav Beryozkin (of Novosibirsk) started the round-the-world voyage along the routes of Russia’s round-the-world seafarers under the auspices of the Tomsk branch of the Russian Geographical Society (RGS), from Kronshtadt on July 1, 2021. They follow the same routes once explored by Ivan Krusenstern (1770-1846), Fyodor Litke (1797-1882) and Thaddeus Bellingshausen (1778-1852).

On February 28, 2023, the team started crossing the Pacific Ocean, where they suffered a shipwreck and lost their trimaran. They used a similar vessel, a sailing inflatable catamaran, to continue the expedition. However, in early September 2023, near Australia, the catamaran was attacked by sharks. The crew was rescued, but the voyagers were left without a vessel and equipment. In Australia, a philanthropist provided the sailors with a hard-hulled sailing ship to continue their journey.

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