(a short story of)

North Sea

to Black Sea

Trans-Europe

Sea Kayak

Expedition

August 4, 1998  -  October 29, 1998

Total: 87 days, 3216 km.

Crew: (Some members of the crew joined and left the expedition at different stages):

Paddlers: K. Gökhan Türe (Team Leader), Levent Yüksel, Zafer Kizilkaya, Dr. Annelies Speksnijder (volunteer paddler from Holland), Emil Flasjman (volunteer Croatian paddler), Turgay Isiklar

Land Support Team: Cenk Metinkaya, Asli Evrensel Türe, Ali Riza Güzel, and Dr. Ahmet Cevdet Yalciner

Sponsors: ALCATEL Communications Company, monthly ATLAS Geographical Magazine

      Paddling out of Willemstad's famous yacht harbor, near where the waters of the Rhine meet the North Sea, the kilometer sign along the riverbank indicated that we were 1000 KM downstream from its source. We had finally left in high spirits after months of preparation, but to tell the truth, we had no idea what lay ahead of us. Would we be able to fight the Rhine current as far as Mainz? It was clear that on the river Rhine the fate of our expedition would be determined. 

     Crossing the whole of Europe on the Rhine, Maine and Danube rivers, using a Klepper sea-kayak to go from the North Sea in the west to the Black Sea in the east – this would perhaps be a “first”. But since we were not sure about it we never pronounced that word until receiving confirmation messages from the International Canoe Federation and the German Canoe Federation. At the same time we wished to give kayakers a rallying a point while making the public more conscious of river protection, and had devised the slogan “One River One World.” which was inspired from “ Project Raft”.

     Two days later we left the gently flowing Bergsche Maas behind to enter the Waal (the main Rhine tributary) via the St. Andries lock, and it was now that the Rhine began to show her true character. The two-day honeymoon was over, as we battled a strong current, sometimes with the help of our rib sails. Our strategy was to reduce the effect of the current as much as possible by keeping near the bank, where we could also make use of the eddy-currents. But the presence of groins built out perpendicular to the bank, sometimes as often as every 100 meters, forced us to change our plan somewhat between groins the current would indeed slacken, but getting past their ends sometimes made us row desperately in place for eternal seconds sometimes adding up to several minutes, but in the end eddy-currents often came to the rescue at these critical moments. But going from one groin to the next was a never-ending struggle, one that would keep us sweating as far as the Main-Danube Canal.

     The chief combat on the Rhine was, we soon realized, not to be with the river itself but with the suction and turbulence created by the large ships that constantly grumbled past. People watching from the banks, and the ships’ crews, would wave to us that we should turn back, that “the river flows this way, you’re rowing upstream.” Had we made some kind of mistake?  No, we knew exactly which way we wanted to go Eastward. Ever eastward, toward the Black Sea.

     On our Rhine passage we spent the nights either camping on the bank together with our land team, or at the canoe/rowing clubs that are to be found in nearly every town along the entire length of the river.

     At Unkel a volunteer rowed with us for about 20 km up current, and the Neuwied-Koblenz river police (Rheinschiffartpolizie) at times kept us company with their boat. The people on the bank showed their interest in a number of ways, calling out hello, blowing whistles, or simply waving. Children and the elderly were our keenest watchers, along with dogs and cows, all of them trying to figure out what we were up to.  We formed a special relationship with cyclers: the long-distance cyclers in particular understood us, and we them.

Duisburg, Cologne, Bonn…After passing through the heartland of German industry, we reached

Koblenz on August 23rd with but one thought in mind: The Lorelei Passage. In the campground at the corner known as the “Deutschen Eck,” where the Moselle joins the Rhine, an elderly German kayaker told us, “So far so good, but now you face some really tough paddling.” From what we could gather, the extremely narrow and “fairy-haunted” Lorelei would be one of the most difficult stretches of the Rhine, and hearing about it for days on end from the German kayakers made us very worried.  Not impossible, they were saying, but very, very hard. In our minds, the Lorelei had become an enormous hurdle and we felt that if we could get past it, we would be 'home'. 

     Our entrance to the Lorelei, at the 555th km, saw us swept downstream several hundred meters the moment we dipped our paddles in the water attempting to fight our way to the opposite bank. Battling the strongest currents encountered so far, and crossing the narrow gorge several times, taking care not to get run over by the big ships maneuvering through the tight bends in the river, we finally got to KM 551, leaving the Lorelei safely behind. But that day the swift current continued to batter us as far as Bingen.

     At noon on August 28th, east of Mainz at the Rhine’s 495th kilometer, we entered the River Main where the signpost on our right announced “0 km.” Twenty-two days of rowing had netted us 510 kilometers, and our average, not counting rest days, would be noted down in the log as 22 km / day. We heartily shook hands all around and let out cries of celebration. At that very moment, however, I recalled that it was still 2705 km to the Black Sea, and soberly reflected that it was a bit early to celebrate.

     With a weaker current against us on the Main we made more cheerful progress, and because the water by the banks was deeper than it had been on the Rhine, the passing ships were less of a trauma. Yet the Main offered another series of obstacles….  An incredibly large number of locks.

     Starting at an altitude of 81 meters, this river meandered serpent-wise until, at the 384th kilometer – near Bamberg – it would bring us to the Main-Danube Kanal, Europe’s chief artery.

     Paddling in almost daily rain, and enduring nights with temperatures falling to five degrees centigrade, we reached Bamberg in eight days at an altitude of 230 meters, having passed no fewer than 34 locks. At last we were into the legendary canal, a waterway measuring 171 kilometers in length and representing the dream of centuries. As we glided forward we were spurred on by one thing only – the thought that every stroke of the paddle brought us that much closer to the Danube. Almost all the locks had small hydroelectric power plants. The water flowed toward us, and rising from one level to another in the lock lifts took about 25 minutes; but the lifts in several locks were out of commission, so that portage of the kayak was necessary, with all its roughly 45 kilograms. Past Bamberg, however, we rowed in canal water of a deathly stillness, occupied by nothing more than the swans and ducks swimming about us. At times, when there was no shipping, the silence would be broken by the cry of geese flocking their way through the skies overhead.

     At Nuremberg, and an altitude of 312 meters, we negotiated seven more locks to enter an artificial canal. This stage was even more monotonous. Four locks more and we reached the altitude of 406 meters, the highest level ground that remained to be traversed. The artificial canal sometimes passed over streams, and carried us for hours through pastoral, even landscapes. From here the descent would begin, after 1000 kilometers of paddling against currents of varying force.

     In the Altmühl Valley near Dietfurt we began to paddle through green country, and five more locks took us to the Danube, near its 2411th kilometer at the town of Kelheim, on September 8, 1998. Rising out of the Black Forest, the Danube wanders some 2800 kilometers, traversing eight countries and defining borders, until it finds the Black Sea at Sulina – the zero kilometer. Our plan, however, was to enter the Black Sea Canal near the Romanian city of Chernavoda, reach the sea that way, and thus shorten our journey by 336 kilometers.

     Once on the Danube we were rowing with the current behind us, a first during this expedition.  Initially we had trouble adapting to this change, but within a few hours we were old hands. Ten more locks took us into Austria at Passau, by which time the Danube was flowing through narrow valleys.  Our first major experience of the Danube came in such a narrow valley, after leaving the river Rannar behind us at the 2196th kilometer. The scenery as we slipped forward was breathtaking, and I was just thinking that this was the sort of trip I had dreamed of when the already strong wind picked up and a sudden downpour battered the sail to begin upsetting our balance. A few kilometers downstream, at a point where the river narrowed even further, we were met by a full-blown storm.  The wind-whipped rain lashed our faces, as did drops of water blown up from the surface of the river, while the whitecaps driving at us from the rear threatened to capsize our craft. After two kilometers of this dangerous going we made the bank near a stream called the Kleine Mühl, and took a wind speed reading of 45 kilometers per hour.

     After Linz, with its baroque architecture lining both banks, press conferences kept us for a few restful days in Vienna. From this famous capital the Danube would carry us out of Austria and down into Slovakia, but from there no more maps specially drawn up for paddlers would be available. Rather, we would have to determine our position using road maps and signals from our GPS. Our best navigation guides, however, were the buoys on the river plus the kilometer signs along the banks. What taxed our strength the most during this stage of the journey were the locks in Austria, for they had no lifts and we thus had to conduct portages every time, involving hauls of up to a full kilometer. Just imagine pulling a sea-kayak on a cart for hundreds of meters each time, usually in the cold rain, and then getting it down to the river again via long staircases.

     After several nail-biting hours at the Devin customs when we entered Slovakia, we moved on to Bratislava and the 1865th kilometer, where the river truly did broaden out to run quiet and slow. After hours of paddling on what was now like a calm lake, we went ashore as the sun met the horizon at Clistov, a town on the Danube’s west bank, and found our land team waiting in our white Toyota truck. At the start of this day, we could not have predicted that we would break our Danube record by doing 110 kilometers in 12 hours.

    At the transit from Slovakia into Hungary it turned out we would break another of our records. At the 1822nd kilometer the Gabjikova Dam awaited us a portage of two exhausting kilometers.

     The city that most struck us between Estergom and Mohacs was, of course, Budapest, the Hungarian capital which has stood on the Danube since the time of the Romans. Munching our sandwiches as we floated by, we were enchanted by the Parliament building that rose in majesty on the Pest bank. And we could not but stare in wonder at the “Chained Bridge” strung like a necklace across the great river to link Pest with Buda. Then we had passed Hungary, the plain of Mohacs behind us, where one of the bloodiest battles in all history had been fought.

     With the Batina Bridge looming in the distance, we entered the region where the Danube forms the border between Serbia and Croatia. Here we pulled alongside a Croatian police boat to have our passports stamped, a fast service with which we were highly pleased.

     In the neighborhood of Batina began a stage that would take us down the Croatian bank as far as Vukovar.  After only three kilometers I suddenly noticed, thanks to the water around my ankles, that our kayak had developed a hole. After approaching the bank a few times to pump out water I was able to see the hole, big enough to admit my finger, and realized that this day would be spent in repairs. We had been close to sinking, but an even greater danger lay around us, because the shores were still riddled with mines left over from the civil war.  At Batina the police chief had warned us, saying “Whatever you do, don’t camp on the shore. In fact, don’t go ashore at all unless you absolutely have to.” During this “Rhapsody of the Mines” we witnessed the glaring marks of that war – bombed-out factories, half-sunken ships in the water, people staring off into the distance, houses with ten bullet holes per square meter; all sights that would never be erased from our memory.

     Towards noon on October 6th we crossed the border at Bac Palanka, a town north of Novi Sad. The Danube was now flowing through Yugoslavia (Serbia), a country where, following hours of questions and polite interrogation at customs, we were to paddle for six more days. The incidents in Kosovo had increased tension between Serbia and NATO, so following the advice of our friends in Yugoslavia we crossed over to the Romanian side at Veliki Grandise and renewed our journey from the village of Belobrejca, determined to stick to Romanian waters.

     This was a region densely populated by Serbs, and during the first Yugoslav-NATO crisis, when an embargo was imposed on the country, fishing boats had carried fuel and food from these villages across to the Yugoslav side. The villagers reflect back on that time of condoned smuggling as “the golden days,” when everyone made good money.

     As the day’s first paddle dipped in the water south of Sivinita village, where the river sign read 976 kilometers, we confronted the entrance to the Kazan Gorge in its entire splendor. Fine weather and a fair wind filling our sails took us quickly in between high cliffs of solid limestone, and from this point we knew we were in the lower Danube basin. The depth of the river in the Kazan Gorge was 35 meters, precisely our altitude above sea level.

     In this narrowest part of the Danube (50-60 meters) ships pass one by one, in a single direction at a time, and at the 974th kilometer the noise of their engines echoed impressively from the steep, imminent sides of the gorge. Several times we yelled at the top of our voice, just to hear the same echoes resounding through the gorge. Birds of prey hovered above, while seagulls flew beside us. The trees sprouting out of the sheer limestone walls of the valley – who knows what they had witnessed in their time. This gorge, roughly three kilometers long, offers the wildest scenery on the entire Danube.

     Once out of the Kazan Gorge the river widened again, and when we approached Orshova on the Romanian side we had a glimpse of the “Iron Gates” (Portil de Fier) Dam in the distance. The mammoth project dam produces 1010 MW of electricity, and we would have to resort to a long portage in order to get by it.  Once we reached the bank, the police checked our passports. However, after passing Brobeta-Turnu Severin and going ashore at the 916th kilometer near Hinova, we were met by border guards, who told us we could not proceed, which in fact it was a polite form of arrest. Only after two days of negotiations were we able to go on thanks to the intervention of embassies combined with special permission granted by the Romanian Ministry of Interior Affairs and the Border Command. This experience convinced us to alter our original plan of occasionally calling at Bulgarian cities, for we were sure to meet with the same difficulties there.  From then on we were confronted by border guards every time we went ashore, and each time they waited until morning to ensure our safety.

     When we slipped into the water from the Bechet bank at the 680th kilometer, there were whitecaps out in the middle, and the wind reached a speed of 25 km per hour compared to 17 km per hour on shore. In river-paddling terms this was a storm and waves overtook us from the rear, depressing the stern of the kayak and spattering my back, while the pedals controlling the rudder were of no use whatsoever. We slacked the sails, but still were losing our balance, and went through a very anxious hour, battered by the main waves plus the chopper waves coming by reflection from the banks, until we finally made our way around the first point of land. During this ordeal I looked back once, but didn’t dare do it again. Our only source of joy that day was sighting a white-tailed eagle.

     In the early morning of October 27, 1998, we set out from Oltina and reached Chernavoda towards noon, 336 kilometers from Sulina and the river’s mouth. For us the Danube was finished, and after a portage, which got us beyond the first lock, we lowered our kayak at the 59th kilometer of the 64-kilometer-long Black Sea Canal (Canaiul Dunare-Marea Negra), also known as “The Canal of Death”. Over 200,000 people had worked on its construction, most of them political prisoners (180,000), and of these 40,000 had died.

     The next day we were stopped by a Canal Authority patrol boat at Medgidia, a city midway along the canal. Here we were told that a special permit was required for travel on the canal, a fact of which we had been blissfully unaware. Thanks to very helpful Romanian bureaucrats, and again with support from embassies, we were given a “special” permit by the Romanian Ministry of Transport and continued on our way. We reached the Agigea lock (south of Port Constanca), just two kilometers from the Black Sea, at noon on October 29th, and standing on the wharf to greet us were journalists, friends, family and a gathering of the merely curious.  

      After a journey of 87 days, our paddles had finally joined the two seas. Silently, I shed a few tears in the waters of the Black Sea. The Trans-Europe Kayak Expedition had come to an end.

The Black Sea

     After completing our passage of an entire continent we engaged in another 200-kilometer cruise along the Romanian, Bulgarian and Turkish coasts, a “ symbolic “ venture meant to draw attention to the polluted state of the waters of the Black Sea. Press conferences organized by friendly NGOs, especially in the port cities of Varna and Burgas, received wide coverage in the press and oral media.

On November 29, 1998, we reached Istanbul, where Europe and Asia meet, and stepped ashore on the wharf at Ortakoy, roughly midway along the Bosphorous, to the jubilant greeting of family and friends.

    This journey was in no way meant as a challenge to nature or an attempt to set some record. All we wanted was to show that ordinary people like us could do something to draw attention to the problems of the environment. And the secret to it all is contained in the words “team spirit.”

K. Gökhan Ture

EXPEDITION FACTS

 +  BLACK SEA COASTAL CRUISE: (ROMANIAN-BULGARIAN-TURKISH COAST) : ~ 200 KM

GENERAL PADDLE SPEED :  43. 95 KM / DAY (Total km / Net paddling days)

BEST DAY of the EXPEDITION : Vienna (Austria) – Clistov (Slovakia), 110 km / day (12 hours)

87 DAYS, 10 COUNTRIES,  3216 KM