I like to swim at deserted beaches. And we have them around. This is the road that leads to one of them:
The beach is stretched for many miles:
And it is really deserted because there is no way to reach it by car. The place of my stop for swimming and reading is here:
Do you like it? Of course there are better ones, and in Volga Region particularly. Therefore I continue my story, Missilemen 10 is below.
There were only two residents in our camp on the other side of the Volga River: Sashka Rusakov and I. But the camp was big enough: three tents for four persons each plus state-room on the Burevestnik’s landing-stage with four berths more. The tents were placed opposite to Polevaya street, just downstream of Burevestink base and a little bit upstream of Poleghaev steamer, close to wooden frame of pre-Revolutionary barge that was cast ashore here someday. It was very cozy place, surrounded by willow bushes. Pretty big fleet was in our possession: Kazanka motor boat with OSVOD’s flag; yawl with full sailing rigs, six oars and motor; yacht, lake centerboarder of M-class. Motorboat and yawl were properties of Diving Club headed by Kostya Cedrov, and yacht was owned by Burevestnik Student Sport Society, but it was registered to my name and belonged de-facto to me.
There were many guests in our camp everyday. To go visit somebody without bottle of hard liquor is impossible for natives of the Volga Region. Therefore drinking was a permanent state of our camp life. And it was hard drinking, mostly of brandy. Soon Sashka took OSVOD’s placards with “Fight against drinking on the aquatics” subjects and hanged them on the tents and poles everywhere in the camp. In vain, it looks like these posters motivated even harder drinking. Empty bottles were arranged on the ribs of the barge frame. In two weeks there was no one free rib. Bottles after Armenian, Azerbaijani, Georgian and Moldavian brandy decorated the barge’s remains. This is one of peculiarities of that time: hard drinking without being drunk. I do not know how to explain this.
Kostya stayed in the camp for several days often. In the morning of such days Sashka dropped him off at the “Lieutenant Schmidt” launch, and at night I picked Kostya same place with my sailing boat. I used opportunity, took two three-liter jars and every time went to place a little bit earlier to buy beer at Mopravskaya barrel. Then I met Kostya, crossed fairway, made it slowly for beer drinking and conversation. It was a chance for Kostya to become cool after hard summer day at construction site. Ones, when we dragged boat out on the trailer, jars were turned over and beer flowed out into the cockpit. The boat was kept in ideal cleanness; therefore on the bank I opened kingston valves and poured beer back to jars. This beer was consumed same night without problems.
Entertaining guests we were entertained ourselves. This is a list of our activities: water skiing, crayfish catching, underwater hunting, fishing with dragnet in the backwaters and on the spits, sailing on the yacht, sailing on the yawl (without steering surface sometime, balancing boat via changing sail center of pressure and center of boat gravity by pulling sheets and changing crew positions), sailing races with helmsmen changes, sailing on Dragon boat (Gena Kozin, its owner, gave it to us often), walking in the meadows and on the islands, and many other good things like night beer drinking and singing near campfire, night swimming. And many more, what I do not remember now.
Tags: Missilemen
