Friendly Viking invasion

The National Maritime Museum in Sydney has played host to a replica Viking ship which has been on a two-year goodwill trip from Russia.

The 15-metre wooden ship is now planning to head to Hobart to join in the Australian Wooden Boat Festival from February 8-11. Called the Rusich, the boat was modeled on the ancient Slavic boats of the X-XII centuries.

The boat is fitted with a small engine but the crew of 10 adventurers prefer to sail or, when they reach a port or river, row the Rusich in true Viking fashion.

According to the Rusich’s captain, Sergey Sinelnik: “So far nobody has managed to reach Australia from Russia in a boat like this." Naturally, the boats of the ancient Slavs never reached our shores but technically this trip proves they could have done so.

The voyage started in 2010 on the banks of the Volga River. The Rusich went through the Black Sea, the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, crossed the Indian Ocean and visited many countries in Southeast Asia. The skipper said that the journey was not without a few obstacles along the way, as repair work had to be done during the stops in Oman and Thailand. However, the Rusich completed its task, says Evgeny Orlov the organiser of the event.

"One can say that a boat like this ancient Slavic sailboat is quite capable of circumnavigating the globe now the boat has reached Australia and having gone through three oceans – the Atlantic, the Indian and the Pacific. Naturally, we would like it to do a complete circumnavigation. But it is no longer an issue of the boat, but a financial issue," Mr Orlov said.

Sergey Sinelnik and his brother Alexander have embarked on several other adventurous journeys. They were the first to travel around the world on Ural motorcycles covering 75,000km. They covered 1,000 kilometers on foot in the Western Sahara Desert and they climbed the highest mountains of Asia, Europe and Africa. When they return from Australia, the Sinelnik brothers intend to build a polar boat and cover the Northern sea routes.