An Orca on Lake Baikal

I wrote yesterday about our boats being built in Ukraine. We have sold our plans to builders in 90 countries, so many of them are being built very in exotic places, places about which most of know almost nothing. The thing to keep in mind is that most of us consider our own particular home locations, wherever they might be, to be just that, home, and not very exotic. But to others in far-off lands my "home" may be the place of dreams and a place that they consider very exotic.

Following on that post yesterday, today I received a bunch of photos of one of my boats racing on Lake Baikal in Siberia. I have written before about Lake Baikal, the largest single body of fresh water in the world. One of those posts was about Ivan Vasilyev building a Didi 26 in Irkutsk.

Ivan's Didi 26 has been in the water for a few years and I have received a few photos of her sailing. Few can compare with the high quality photos in this latest set, taken by Eugene Belimov. These photos also show how I can consider Siberia as an exotic place. The beauty of this place in summer is plain to see, far from the image that most of us hold of Siberia being a desolate, forbidding and nasty place, consisting only of salt mines and work camps as told to us in history books.

Ivan's Didi 26 against a forested mountainside backdrop.

That said, winter is another story completely. Intensely cold, frozen for many months. That is when it becomes a place of hard-water sailing (iceboats) and other ice-and-snow activities to get the locals through the tough months.

To get back to Ivan's Didi 26, she is named "Kosatka", Russian for "Orca". "Kosatka" is painted in a striking colour scheme to represent an orca.

"Kosatka" racing to windward.

"Kosatka" under big asymmetrical.

"Kosatka" chasing a playmate across autumn waters, making the most of
sunny days ahead of the bitterly cold winter.

Thanks to Eugene Belimov for use of his photos.

To see more of our designs, go to our main website or our mobile website.