ARKHANGELSK, January 29. /TASS/. A new tourist route - The Mangazey Seaway Passage: from the White Sea to the Pacific Ocean - about Pomors' traditional medieval shipbuilding is offered in Arkhangelsk, leader of the Pomor Shipbuilding Association Yevgeny Shkaruba told TASS, adding tourists will visit a shipyard, where specialists use ancient technologies to make the Northern Sea Route explorers' vessel - a koch.
"We will tell tourists about the geopolitical race in development and discovery of the Arctic and Siberia, between Russian explorers and European expeditions that rushed there in the 16th century. We invite visitors to an exhibition that has been presented at the Museum of Moscow, the Pushkin Museum (of Fine Arts) and the Museum of the Arctic and Antarctic. The exhibition tells also about how we have sailed through the Mangazeya Seaway onboard a karbas. (Karbases are sailing and rowing fishing, hunting and transport wooden vessels, common at least since the 15th century till now on the White and Barents Seas.) The tour will finish at the Koch building site, where we have been building a koch in a special hangar," he said.
The Pomors' koch is a naval vessel of first Arctic explorers. Last vessels, built using the classical method, that is from wood only, were built in the 17th century, when explorers were close to finish Siberian discoveries. Further on, shipbuilders were moving away from the traditional technology, and began using metal rivets. A traditional koch is stitched together, without using metal. According to the association's leader, the project is designed for children and adults, locals and tourists.
Tourists will learn about the old-fashioned (pre-Peter the Great) shipbuilding, about how, due to the skills to build ships quickly and cheaply, the Arctic and Siberia were explored in a short time in the 16th - 17th centuries, about the competition with Western sailors who at that time were searching for a route to China and India; and about the process of building a vessel from kokora - a part of the pine or spruce trunk with a large lateral root located at an angle to the trunk to make the vessel's base.
Koch building
In 2023, the Pomor Shipbuilding Association, supported by the Presidential Foundation for Cultural Initiatives and by the Vladimir Potanin Charitable Foundation, built in Moscow a traditional Pomor kabas. In 2024, onboard that karbas an expedition sailed along the ancient trade route from Arkhangelsk to Mangazeya, the first polar city in Siberia. The current koch building continues that project.
It will be a big marine vessel: 15 m long, almost 6 m wide and the side's height will be 2.8 m. The koch was laid in late October, 2025. Presently, the builders are installing the fifth of 25 row of boards. There have been a number of problems during the project, since the technology is old and nobody has been using it for a long time, Yevgeny Shkaruba said. The specialists have managed the technology, and now the site is also a place to learn traditional wooden shipbuilding. People from other cities are coming there to try "wood sewing," and students are coming to have practice.
"We are happy to offer a chance to work, to volunteer, we are happy to help in learning, because positively there won't be another chance. This is a big and complex project, and this is the first building of a koch since the old times," he said.
The vessel's building is due to be finished in the summer of 2026, though it is difficult to plan exact dates. "I hope that this year we will launch the koch into the water, will conduct tests, will have it registered, will get ready for the sailing, which will begin next year," he added.
The voyage will be in stages: during the navigation in 2026-2029, the voyage will take place in stages from Arkhangelsk along the Northern Sea Route, along the Siberian rivers - the Ob, the Yenisei, the Lena - and around Cape Dezhnev into the Pacific Ocean. The expedition is planned to finish in Vladivostok.