The Expedition
In summer 2016, we spent about 8 weeks in Lake Baikal travelling in an inflatable catamaran "Bombat" alongside the Russian Sailing Expedition. We set off to sail and SCUBA dive around the entire circumference of the lake to investigate and report on the environmental crisis of the lake in hope to raise awareness on this issue.
Coasts of Russia Sail Team
For the Sacred Sea Expedition we joined forces and hitched a ride with the Narval Sail Team from Moscow on their expedition to Lake Baikal which is part of a larger project called Coasts of Russia (Верега Русии). Their team plans to sail and document the coasts of Russia from Crimea to the Far East. Every year they go on a new sailing tour - with their favourite spot being the White Sea.
Olesya
Ilyina
skipper, biologist
Mikhail Kasatkin
technical manager, catamaran designer
To follow the Coasts of Russia Project:
Itinerary
We started from Irkutsk along the Angara river to Baikal and then covered approximately 30-40km per day sailing 6-12 hours. In some places we stayed multiple days to dive, film or simply just to wait for the winds and weather to be in our favour. Towards the end of summer the risk of our visas expiring and weather not cooperating was very high, therefore we did not manage to sail the whole circumference of Baikal as we have set out to do. However, we were able to finish diving around the circumference by driving to the sites as the last stretch along the south east coast is close to civilisation.
