Mikhail Elsin, a native of Khabarovsk, may soon repeat the way of great Konyukhov. In any case, he accompanied the famous traveller during crossings of the Atlantic and the Pacific. Not long ago he returned from a whale watching expedition in the Sea of Okhotsk.
Mikhail lives practically in two cities: he mainly teaches Economics and manages his geographic club in Kursk, now and then leaving for his homeland Khabarovsk.
Three Men in a Boat...
Elsin was born in 1975 on Lake Khanka, Primorski Krai. The military base where his parents Nikolai and Vera served was situated right near the Chinese border. Soon they were transferred to Khabarovsk. Mikhail lived there from five years' age until he graduated from Economy and Law Academy, and in the middle of the 1990s he left to Kursk for his second accounting education.
The Far East nature – the vast, now tranquil, now restless sea and rapid rivers running through pristine taiga great spaces where it was more likely to encounter a bear than a human being – cultivated in Mikhail a drive to risky and dangerous travels. His great-great-grandfather who had lived in the 19th century was also an adventurer.
"In youth, before moving from the central Russia to Siberia, my ancestor had lived for several years in Latin America," Mikhail says. "He tried to get settled there, but disagreed with Indians. They hunted with blowpipes firing darts whereas he hunted with a gun. When he fired a gun all beasts around ran away! The natives took a dislike to him because of that."
After he had been five, his father started to take him hiking, hunting and fishing. He participated in his first unguided trip when he was twelve. In early spring, when water was still high after most of the snow had just melt down, three friends contrived to go down the Amur River. It was cold and some ice still remained on the water surface. They ran away from school, stashed their backpacks, found an old boat on the river bank and caulked it. Despite that, the boat leaked so heavily that while two of them rowed, the third one was scooping out water.
The rapid flow of the river took the boat instantly very far away. Having understood that they had been lost and there would have been no way to return on their own, the unsavvy Columbuses started to worry. Their parents at home already raised the full alarm because nobody had the slightest clue where to search the vanished kids.
"Our boat floated on the river for two days," Mikhail recollects. "We did not meet anyone during that time because we were in taiga. We spent the night on a small island, trying hard to warm up near a bonfire. Luckily, some of us had matches. But we had no food at all, therefore when a coast defence ship picked us up the next day, the first thing the sailors did was to feed us with navy-style macaroni, sweet tea and bread. We received a good deal of punishment at home."
"We We Attacked by a Bear..."
Mikhail was exposed to danger many a time in his numerous trips and marine expeditions. Each bygone accident is a priceless experience, though it is better to learn from the mistakes of others. To mitigate a risk to minimum and not to lose courage in an extreme situation, a traveller has to know how to find his way in a forest, how to kindle a fire, how to find water and food, how to build a makeshift sleeping place and how to react during encounters with wildlife.
"It often happens so that your trip supplies are either lost, or eaten by animals, or drowned during a storm," my interlocutor notes. "It is easier in taiga in this respect. One can eat what is found literally under one's feet – nuts, mushrooms, berries, and fish from a river. Again, it is not a bid deal to find fresh water. However, when you're in an open sea or an ocean, it's a completely different story. It is even hard to warm up, because you can't start a bonfire on a raft. But people endure such conditions – they freeze, suffer from hunger and it's okay. You just become more confident in your strength."
In the Far East, where the unbridled and unexplored wilderness already begins at a distance of a hundred kilometres from the city, they have heard talks about encounters with bears, tiger, wolves and foxes since childhood. They say that under no circumstances one should run away from a beast. Instead, one should pick up something long or drive the animal away with loud sounds.
Elsin is "on a first-name basis" with "the club-footed", as bears are often referred to. "Sometimes Himalayan black bears occur, but the brown bears are scarier because they are bigger," he says. "Both species attack by accident, if at all. For example, when somebody wakes them by mistake. It happened to me once. I was with a team, so we shouted all together and raised an oar – the bear halted three meters away. Our floating facilities suffer much more. Those things happened many a time: we get up in the morning to find our catamaran torn apart to pieces."
Mikhail Elsin's children try to catch up with him little by little. But if for eight-year old Peter and his younger sister Anna a field trial is still ahead of them, their older seven-grade brother Stepan was already involved in an expedition on a par with grown-ups: he kept watch, cooked food, washed clothes on his own and swam in cold water. Then, in 2014, they rafted on inflatable catamarans from Krasnoyarsk to the Putorana Plateau that stretches above the Polar Circle. The sun never sets in that region during summer.
Masters of Elements
In 2006, Mikhail Elsin met the famous Russian traveller Feodor Konyukhov who has impressed the world with his daring travels. "Feodor is full of courage," Mikhail asserts. “I had just finished reading his book about a round-the-world-trip when I found out that he builds a new team for his planned transatlantic crossing. I sent in my resume stating my intention to join the team. We met in Moscow. He said: "Why not?"
The Transatlantic crossing from Antigua island in the Caribbean region to English town Falmouth lasted 23 days. The team of six people including Feodor's son Oscar covered more than 4,000 miles. Yacht Alye Parusa ("Scarlet Sails") survived through heaviest storm. And when the weather was benevolent for them, the travellers, on the contrary, had to fight boredom. Books, music in players, and, of course, yarns of seasoned sea wolves were called to arms.
"Feodor is a prolific and interesting talker," Mikhail shares his impressions. "It is not that easy to travel alone in a rowing boat from Chile to Australia, to conquer Everest twice, to make one's way to the North and South poles... He just does this..."
Elsin and Konyukhov also had other joint marine expeditions. In 2009, they crossed the Pacific Ocean from the New Zealand city of Oakland to the Falkland Islands in one month. This time the Russian crew was augmented with Mark Macrae, a sea captain from Australia. The yacht went through "uninhabited" waters off the tracks of other vessels. The team regularly received data with coordinates and time of immersion of space satellites buried there.
A three-day windless condition could be changed by gigantic waves, riding upon which, the steersman observed the horizon for many miles ahead. Coldness and dampness on-board, as well as a danger to collide with underwater icebergs was compensated by frequent encounters with sea inhabitants. Once Mikhail and his friends witnessed a migration of king penguins – a flock of several hundreds of birds jumping out of water one by one was moving toward the North-East.
When the seamen reached Cape Horn, they celebrated the event by drinking a bottle of Champaign. Mikhail Elsin proposed to put a message in the bottle and so they did... Exactly three years after, this message was found on the Australian coast – it crossed the South Atlantic and the Indian Ocean.
To Make Friends with a Whale
Two years ago Mikhail Elsin and Feodor Konyukhov took a trip to small and isolated Iony Island in the Sea of Okhotsk. The last summer they travelled to Shantar Islands in the same sea. One of the most recent and yet difficult expeditions for Mikhail was a two-month-long exploration of the water area of the Sea of Okhotsk under auspices of Russian Geographical Society.
"Many unforeseen things happened," he recollects. "When our photographer Pavel put out his arm we had already been hundreds of miles away from civilization. We called medics via a satellite phone to ask how to help our friend. So we had to land. It was night with a strong fog, therefore, while we were setting the arm, our catamarans were gone with the wind to the sea. The winds are unpredictable there. We caught one catamaran soon but the second one with a half of equipment, gear and food supplies onboard was found only one week after."
In that expedition, Mikhail Elsin took samples of flora and fauna, developed potential tourist routes and watched whales. Every day the team encountered 100-ton bowhead whales, minke whales, orcas, beluga whales, dolphins and grey whales.
"There are a few places in the world where these mammals can be watched," Mikhail says. "It was in the Sea of Okhotsk that I saw them for the first time. By the way, this is the southernmost habitat of the bowhead whale. In other areas of the world, they occur above the Polar Circle."
The native of Khabarovsk shares his pictures and acquired data with scientists. But his main thrill is a personal communication with whales. "When we are on the drift, they approach us so closely that one can touch them," Mikhail says smiling.
