By Lyubov Tsarevskaya
Today I will tell you about an amazing man I met during a recent trip to Volgograd. Vladimir Koretsky is a God-loving businessman who has built three floating churches Russia never had before. Vladimir is also a fine athlete and a great fan of the famous singer, songwriter and actor Vladimir Vysotsky, one of the most popular Russian bards who was virtually adored by the entire nation in the 1960 and 70s and still remains so today.
Vladimir Koretsky invited me to his yacht-club named after the famous bard. What I saw there literally blew me away… Overlooking the free-flowing Volga River was an elegant chapel with a cell and belfry made of granite and looking  down I saw the golden dome of the St. Vladimir floating church. And, flowing above all this amazing beauty was the silvery chiming of bells…
Vladimir showed me around the museum dedicated to the life and work of Vladimir Vysotsky. At first, I could not find a connection between the man’s love for the Soviet-era bard and his belief in God. As it turned out there was a connection and a very close one too. Asked what he found so special about Vysotsky, Vladimir said: “Spiritually we are very close. I heard his songs the first time when I was 13 and became hooked for life. Working hard I put together enough money to buy a tape recorder so I could listen to Vysotsky’s songs… I was living in Kremenchug, that’s in Ukraine, and did not know anything about his life and the roles he played. Learning about Vysotsky’s death, that was in 1980, I was literally devastated…
Finishing a rail college in Kremenchug I moved to Volgograd and entered an institute there. During get-togethers I played the guitar and sang songs by popular bards and of my very own writing. I never dared to sing Vysotsky’s songs, though, maybe I didn’t think I was worth singing them...
In 1991 I, a longtime fan of Alpine climbing, took my 10 year old son Ruslan on a trip to the Pamir Mountains. When we arrived there, there came that terrible earthquake in Afghanistan. The temblor sent a huge snow cap from the Lenin Peak crushing down right on the climbers’ camp burying 43 people under… There were no survivors. Ruslan and I joined in the rescue operation singing Vysotsky’s songs which so buoyed the people’s spirits that they kept asking us to sing again and again… The work over, of those people, who had climbed a whole 7-kilometer tall mountains thanked me for Vysotsky’s songs and wished me to sing them as long as I was alive… It was after that tragedy that I finally made up my mind to sing Vysotsky’s songs to popularize his heritage. Vladimir Vysotsky left behind a treasure trove of hundreds of songs many of which are little known. Some of them people do not know at all…
I wanted to do something that would be worth Vysotsky’s memory. I decided to cross the Atlantic and visit the countries he performed in and sing his songs there… Once, during a concert in Toronto, people kept cheering him up and inviting to come over and over again… Vysotsky promised to come back… and so I  decided to keep that promise and cross the Atlantic on board a yacht bearing his name.
Enlisting the help of my 14-year-old son Ruslan, and yachtsmen Sergei and Vladimir, I started preparing for the voyage. We did not have enough money to buy a good vessel, we took a discarded 7 meter long yacht and fixed it. Fearing for my life, my friends insisted that I take a bigger one, but I said I would go on a small one and prove that Russia had not run out of strong, willed people…
In April 1996, blessed by the Metropolitan German of Volgograd and Kamyshin and Vladimir Vysotsky’s mother, we set out on what proved to be a very long and risky voyage…”
Listening to Vladimir’s story I was amazed by his stamina and perseverance. Well, it surely takes a lot of courage to cross eight seas and the Atlantic Ocean in the company of just three people, one of them a 14-year-old boy… That was really an extreme experience with stopovers in Novorossiysk, Istanbul, Athos, Pirey, Malta, Corsica, Cartagena, Gibraltar, Madeira, the Bermudas, New York and, finally, Toronto…
“From Novorossiisk we headed for Istanbul and from there to Athos island where we had an unforgettable meeting with the father superior of the St. Panteleimon Monastery, Archimandrite Jeremiah,” Vladimir Koretsky goes on to say. “I would have lost my nerve if it had been for him. Father Jeremiah blessed us with Iberian icon of the Holy Mother of God, handed us paper icons with Her image and strongly advised us to kiss the myrrh-pouring image of Holy Virgin as soon as we reached Toronto…
In the Mediterranean the crew struggled with the heavy storms that always rage there at this time of year… The strong head winds pushed the Vystosky off course and they found themselves in Malta and then on Corsica. The Russians were not always welcome but as soon as the locals found out about the crew’s mission and heard Vladimir Vysotsky’s songs, the attitude changed dramatically…
In the Tyrrhenian Sea the crew ran against local pirates. Realizing there was nothing they could take away from the Russian traveler, the pirates gave them a  couple of fresh lobsters and moved on.
“On June 1, 1996 we sailed out of the Mediterranean,” Vladimir Koretsky sais. “By nightfall the wind started picking up sending up 11 meter high waves that kept battering our flimsy craft. Working seven days and nights we managed to stay afloat. Later we learned that we had wound up in the so-called killer waves zone between Gibraltar and Madeira. Once, as we were fighting for our life, Ruslan said, “Dad, are we going to die this time?”
Trying to look upbeat, I said, “Are you kidding me? Father Jeremiah blessed us, God Almighty is out there looking down at us, Vladimir Vysotsky is praying for our souls! We will make it, we surely will!” To make things worse, it was terribly cold and we kept pouring seawater on each other to stay warm. Water temperature was just plus 5 Celsius… The first pale in the name of The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, the second for Virgin Mary, the third for our Heavenly patrons and for all Saints, seven pales in all… That kept us warm…
Logging 670 kilometers we arrived in Madeira. People at the local immigration service did look particularly happy to see us, but when we told him where we had come from, the American Captain went down on one knee and said, “I’m bowing down to the courageous Russian sailors!” All of a sudden the officers were all smiles and giving us every help we possibly needed…
In the Atlantic Ocean we had a chance to experience more than just a storm, we realized what dead calm is really all about… You never know which one is better, believe me… When you are dangling in the middle of nowhere without radio, without drinking water, without nothing you start wishing to God this does not last forever… Then Ruslan asked me once again whether we were going to die this time… “Come on, son! We’ll live to build a floating church to thank God for saving us!” I said. That’s exactly something we eventually did… The dead calm lasted for a whole nine days and nights. To get a gulp of fresh water we would spread a singlet and squeezed it dry after rain. A mug of fresh water was a real Godsend to us as we celebrated Ruslan’s 15th birthday amid the Atlantic Ocean…
Finally the wind started picking up and we moved on only to run smack into Hurricane Bertha which was as terrible as Hurricane Katrina that recently wreaked havoc on New Orleans…
When we arrived in New York the local media was all ablaze about our crossing the Atlantic. The Americans who had followed the recent weather reports were stunned by the incredible courage displayed by Russian yachtsmen who managed to sail thought the hurricane on such a tiny vessel. They would come in large numbers and, looking incredulous, wondered how come we could have made it through on such a flimsy piece of plastic! Ruslan was a major attraction grabber being the first teenager to cross the Atlantic on a yacht for which feat he won a mention in the Guinness Book of World Records…
12/26/2005 |