Same place, same time. one day on 3 Aug
One of my heroes is Bill Tillman, A great climber and sailer. He wrote, one of the biggest dangers in base camp was ‘bed sores’.
During the night the wind changed direction, and increased to 20 knots. All in the ‘wrong ‘ direction. Westerly, which hopefully will take shore ice away from land in the Laptev sea, which will help us, but short term, push and jam ice into the Vilkitsky straight.
As we do an anchor watch, our days are long. So lots of sleep and downtime. We read every thing in sight. I have read Ben’s GCSE Modern History from cover to cover. Not sure if I would pass anything, but very interesting reading to see a modern perspective on World Affairs.
Meanwhile, the Vodka hour has arrived. We toast Boris Vilkitsky 1885-1961 tonight. We need to get through his straight. He was the man who discovered this area, and Amundsen, who was no slouch, named him the ‘Columbus of the 20th Century’. Praise indeed.
We then need to get through the Laptev sea. This was discovered by two Cousins. Khariton and Dmitry Laptev c1700-1760. They will be tomorrows Vodka toast.
Tonight, we checked the weather and Ice with Sergai, one of Nikolay’s friends in Murmansk. Like the Sergai in the Marmots adverts in England. We are not going anywhere.
New ice charts tomorrow. So we stay on Pilota (Vasiliy) Makhotkino (1904 -1974) Island. Named after a famous Soviet Polar Pilot. He left the Soviet Union after the Revolution. He is the only person to have left the Country, but the Soviets left his name on the charts.
If we get frozen in for winter here, we will build a Cairn to toast Vodka.
David
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When did Pilota (Vasiliy) Makhotkino leave the Soviet Union? You don’t mean to imply in 1918, do you? He would have been 14 years old and not yet a famous Soviet Polar Pilot. Of course anyone leaving the Soviet Union would be doing it sometime after the Revolution.
Please enlighten me did I get my facts wrong?
The Revolution marks the start of the Soviet Union. Anybody who left the Soviet Union left after the Revolution. The phrase of “after the Revolution” is pointless but the actual year would be interesting, such as did he leave to avoid being purged?
Is there a chance you will “get frozen in for winter” there?
No not where we are. Just joking.
You will find information about Makhotkin in Soljenitsyne Goulag archipel :
“I love that moment when a newcomer is admitted to the cell for the first time (not a novice who has only recently been arrested and will inevitably be depressed and confused, but a veteran zek). And I myself love to enter a new cell (nonetheless, God grant I never have to do it again) with an unworried smile and an expansive gesture: “Hi, brothers!” I throw my bag on the bunks. “Well, so what’s new this past year in Butyrki?”
We begin to get acquainted. Some fellow named Suvorov, a 58. At first glance there’s nothing remarkable about him, but you probe and pry: at the Krasnoyarsk Transit Prison a certain Makhotkin was in his cell.
“Just a moment, wasn’t he an Arctic aviator?”
“Yes. They named . . .”
“… an island after him in the Taimyr Gulf. And he’s in prison for 58-10. So does that mean they let him go to Dudinka?”
“How do you know? Yes.”
Wonderful! One more link in the biography of a man I don’t know. Makhotkin got a whole “quarter”—twenty-five years—but the island named after him couldn’t be renamed because it was on all the maps of the world (it wasn’t a Gulag island). They had taken him on at the aviation sharashka in Bolshino and he was unhappy there: an aviator among engineers, and not allowed to fly. They split that sharashka in two, and Makhotkin got assigned to the Taganrog half, and it seemed as though all connection with him had been severed. In the other half of it, however, in Rybinsk, I was told that he had asked to be allowed to fly in the Far North. And now I had just learned he had been given that permission. It turned out he had been a patient in the Butyrki hospital for half a year and was about to leave for the Rybinsk sharashka. In another three days the prisoners in Rybinsk, too, a closed box where zeks are cut off from all ties with the outside world, would nevertheless learn that Makhotkin was in Dudinka, and they would also find out where I had been sent.”