Before the curtain fell: Black Sea 1987
Our voyage in 1987 was in Rozinante, a Mirror Offshore 18 that is not the most agile sailing boat Van de Stadt designed.
The voyage down the Danube started in Regensburg in Germany and continued on downstream through the eastern bloc to Constanta on the
Black Sea. Being unable to get fuel in Romania the 200 mile passage to
Istanbul took four days under sail.
After a breather in Istanbul we sailed
Rozinante on through the Marmara
Sea to the Aegean and down to
Bodrum on the Turkish coast.
This voyage was made before the Iron Curtain tore and the former satellites of the USSR broke free from their communist masters.
We departed after the Romanian officials arrived at midday - they had said they would be there by eight in the morning. We left with the warning that we must proceed straight out to sea until we were 10 miles off the coast before changing course for Bulgaria. We had a fair
