Infusion of cash from filmmaking partners saves stranded Batkivshchyna
ond part of its expedition. Now it would sail from Sydney to Kyiv, with a new crew of celebrity filmmakers and a new mission: telling Ukraine about the world.
By spring of this year, the 29.4-meter schooner had chalked off some impressive accomplishments during the four years of its Discover Ukraine expedition.
The magnificent boat had sailed around a huge portion of the globe, stopping in 70 ports in 14 countries on four continents, during each layover publicizing its too-little known homeland. Captain Dmytro Biriukovich, 67, and his crew had also raised money for Ukrainian charities, including the Children of Chornobyl Relief Fund.
The Batkivshchyna’s mission of global outreach had been covered by the world’s media, and the boat had made it safely through some hair-raising high-seas adventures.
Yet this April found the schooner stranded in a harbor in Sydney, to which Biriukovich and crew had sailed from the Americas. The Batkivshchyna, which receives no financing from the Ukrainian government, had been conquered. It was out of money to continue its journey.
Weathering headwinds
The sail from the Americas to Australia was a troubled one, and perhaps was a harbinger of things to come.
In New Zealand, after welcoming aboard that country’s minister for foreign affairs and more than 3,000 guests, two crewmembers refused to go further and left the ship.
From the very beginning, the Batkivshchyna did not have a permanent crew, as few people were able to leave their homes for such a long time. Volunteers were rotating, taking several month-long shifts, arriving and leaving by airplane.
The two that left the ship started in California. “They found it too hard, but I told them openly that the next stage will be even harder – the segment between New Zealand and Australia is very dangerous. And they got scared,” Biriukovich says.
They told the captain they’d been sent money to buy return plane tickets to Kyiv, and that there was nothing he could do, as they were volunteers. The problem was, these were the only crew members he had. Now he was left alone, his wife Nina having gone ahead to Australia by plane.
Captain Biriukovich posted announcements in local hostels and finally recruited five persons: two Americans, one Swiss, one German – all backpackers. He also signed on one Russian immigrant, a local taxi driver.
Later Biriukovich found out that the two who wished to return to Kyiv had deceived him. When the boat left the island, they went to immigration authorities and complained that the captain had abandoned them, and that they had no money to buy return tickets. It was their strange attempt to get political asylum. Finally, they were deported to Kyiv.
Tasmanian devil
In the meantime, Biriukovich’s predictions of a tough sail from New Zealand to Australia proved correct. On the Tasman Sea the Batkivshchyna hit not one, but two cyclones – enormous storms with six-meter waves and 60-knot winds that would’ve toppled a smaller vessel. None of the new crew had ever stepped aboard a sailing ship before; most became extremely seasick, and the captain had to fight the elements virtually alone.
Both mainsails were destroyed during the voyage, and the Batkivshchyna arrived in Sydney under motor power, broken down and flat broke.
Ukrainian-Australian Igor Hryshchenko, whom the Biriukovichs once helped to find relatives in Ukraine, offered to pay the ship’s mooring costs. Captain Biriukovich left Hryshchenko as the trustee.
“I told him that if I don’t get the money, he can do whatever he wants with the boat: sell it or sink it,” he says.
Fishing for cash
As Biriukovich remembers it, another $100,000 was needed to finish the journey. That amount would cover the visas and salaries for the new crew (before that there were no salaries, but Biriukovich realized people needed a stronger incentive than a thirst for adventure to stay loyal to the ship), plane tickets to Australia, five refuelings, mooring costs and minor repairs, including the replacement of the mainsails. In addition, the money was needed for food and supplies for the crew, and for new Ukrainian-oriented souvenirs for the boat to distribute on The 10-month return route would take the boat along the north coast of Australia, traversing the Indian Ocean to South Africa. Then the boat would cross the Atlantic to Argentina, sail up the American coastline and cross the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. Then up the Dnipro and back to Kyiv. But that was a best-case scenario.
“My dream was that the boat would simply be back in Kyiv,” confesses the captain. But that dream depended on his still-to-be-located new partners, who had to share it.
Earth quest at sea
The idea that saved the mission was this: The Batkivshchyna would become a floating filming ground for adventure travel films.
Like Jacques-Yves Cousteau’s famous ship Calypso, the Batkivshchyna will travel the world with cameraman on it, photographing and videotaping its every tack. There will also be writers on it, observing, doing research and conducting interviews with the inhabitants of the ports in which the boat lands. Eventually all this will become, so to speak, media – books, photo exhibits, and documentaries will result, and narrative feature films, it is hoped, will also be inspired.
Credit for turning the Batkivshchyna into a floating studio belongs to the Klyuch.com publishing group, consisting of Constantin Mohilnik, Dmytro Karateyev and acclaimed Ukrainian cinematographer Serhy Mykhalchuk.
Journalist, writer and polyglot, Constantin Mohilnik is better known as a member of the Equites team, a crew of three hardcore travelers who were also heroes of an “extreme show” called “Equites” that showed the crew adventuring in Africa. It was broadcast on Ukraine’s Inter channel from March 2003 to Jan. 2004.
Poet and linguist Dmytro Karateyev is the author of five verse collections and numerous translations of poetry from French, Polish, English, German and Persian into Russian. He is also the chief editor of the Prologue publishing house, specializing in Orthodox literature.
Serhy Mykhalchuk is one of Ukraine’s most celebrated filmmakers. In October 2002, he won a Silver Shell award for best cinematography at the San Sebastian International Film Festival in Spain. In doing so Mykhalchuk became only the third director of photography in the entire history of Ukrainian cinema to receive such a distinction. The film he won for was Valery Todorovsky’s “Lyubovnik” (The Lover). Mykhalchuk was also involved in Oles Sanin’s epic “Mamay,” the first Ukrainian film in history to be nominated for an Academy Award, for best foreign film, in 2003.
Photographs of the North Pole by Mykhalchuk were published in the Israeli edition of National Geographic magazine in 2000.
Getting the travel bug
Tying them all to the sea, aside from their professional accomplishments, was that all three men – Mohilnik, Karateyev and Mykhalchuk – are scuba divers.
Last year, the friends founded Klyuch.com (“klyuch” means at once “key” and “spring” or “source” in Russian) so that they could publish what they have seen in their travels.
It turned out the group wanted a boat. “We’ve always dreamt about seeing the Earth from the water,” Mohilnik says.
And someone with a boat, of course, needed some partners. Friends from the Kyiv Yacht Club introduced the trio to Biriukovich, who liked the idea of turning his boat into a Ukrainian Calypso.
“Our goals are absolutely congruent, and I’m extremely happy,” says Biriukovich. “From the beginning, I’ve been seeking [to make professional films] and invited reporters and professional cameramen to join me, but finding skilled workers was always a problem, so we had to get by with our own amateur resources.”
On June 5, at the 4th Silver Shark International Underwater Image Festival – an annual event featuring underwater photography and films, a scuba diving equipment fair and more, held at Budynok Kino – Biriukovich and Klyuch.com presented a joint film project about the ship’s wanderings: “EarthQuest Aboard the Batkivshchyna.”
A world too small
The “earth quest” idea is Mohilnik’s.
“Everyone is born to see the earth – whether he rambles the globe, immigrates to another country or never leaves his hometown,” Mohilnik says. “And if the person not only wants to see it all, but also to tell others, it’s an earth quest.”
“An earth quest can be done by anyone – on the ocean, in the sky, or on foot.”
The first earth quest – an epic journey with a spiritual component – was the Equites team’s Africa Quest. Within three years, Mohilnik and friends had traveled across 10 African countries on jeeps, filming their adventures.
Next came eight smaller Klyuch.com projects, such as photo exhibits and magazine articles.
In 2003-2004, the group traveled to Malaysia and Egypt. Currently they are heading for Australia to participate as part of Ukraine’s national team in the World Hot Air Balloon Competition in Mildura, along the Murray River in southern Australia from June 27-July 3. They’ll do “an earth quest from the air,” Mohilnik says.
While in Australia, the group will meet with Ihor Hryshchenko and step aboard the Batkivshchyna.
Meanwhile, Captain Biriukovich hopes the odyssey will continue, now that he’s got new partners.
“Of course, it’s absurd to expect governmental funding, because the sum is too large,” Mohilnik says. “But I’m sure we’ll find people willing to invest in a project like this.”
