Intrepid Captain’s Next Sail Set

In his homemade tall ship, Dmytro Biriukovich sailed from Kiev, went missing on the high seas, blew triumphantly into New York Harbor, delivered toys to Cuba and, to the amused admiration of a growing coterie of admirers, navigated countless other obstacles large and small.

Then his incredible journey could have ended in a tangle of red tape in Long Beach. Biriukovich and his boat have been here since September, spending the winter before heading west to complete a journey around the world. But he needed a new crew from Ukraine, and they couldn’t get visas.

Then last week, fate once again smiled on the 66-year-old Ukrainian with big maritime dreams and little money.

His crew of six, whose visas to enter the U.S. from the Ukraine were held up for months, flew into LAX on Monday.

The crew has set to work repairing the 97-foot Bat’kivshchyna and then will sail off to complete the journey begun three years ago, cursing bureaucracy as they leave.

“He is really ... spectacular,” said Veronica Uhryniak, who coordinated the dozens of tall ships from 24 nations that sailed along the Eastern Seaboard as part of the Bicentennial OpSail 2000 festival.

“I’m glad to hear he’s still alive,” she added.

It is a sentiment frequently voiced by those familiar with the escapades of Biriukovich and his boat, which over the years has been the subject of a U.S. Coast Guard search, has run aground in rivers on two continents and has sailed without radar or, very briefly, a working toilet.

Biriukovich rolls with it all.

“It doesn’t matter. It is ocean. We must save ourselves,” he said.

“There are three things in life very nice,” the captain added, explaining that he was quoting an old saying: “A horse running, a woman without clothes and a boat under sails.”

Biriukovich said he has always preferred a boat under sails.

His wife of nearly 45 years, Nina, remembers that for their first date, “he took me not to a restaurant, not to some nice place, but to a boat.”

Little did she know what was eventually in store for her. But she has made do. During their stay in Long Beach, Nina, 67, has planted tomatoes in pots on the dock beside the ship and made coffee in the ship’s tiny kitchen for homesick Ukrainians drawn by their country’s blue and yellow flags.

The flags flap above the ship, a converted fishing boat with two graceful masts that can be taken down when the vessel goes under bridges.

Below, there is a kitchen, a master bedroom and berths for a crew.

“It is difficult to be here in these conditions,” she said through a translator. “But home to me is to be with my husband.”

For most of their marriage, her husband’s wanderlust was never an issue. When Ukraine was still part of the Soviet Union, Biriukovich said, he was forbidden to head to the open sea.

Instead, he worked as a civil engineer and confined himself to drifting up and down the Dnieper River, founding the first Ukrainian yacht club in 1967.

Over the years, he and his brothers also began retrofitting rickety old boats with Ferro-Cement, strengthening their hulls and making them sturdy enough for rough seas. One of those is the Bat’kivshchyna, which means “Fatherland” in Ukrainian.

After that nation became independent in 1991, Biriukovich wasted no time in proudly hoisting a Ukrainian flag and shipping out. Down the Dnieper and across the Mediterranean they sailed, to Spain, Greece, Turkey, Italy, Cyprus, Israel.

In all the countries they visited, Biriukovich said, curious passersby would flock outside the ship asking, “What is this flag?”

A staunch Ukrainian patriot, Biriukovich was appalled. “That’s how the idea was born,” he said. He converted his boat into a floating expression of Ukrainian nationalism, hand-lettering displays in careful, if sometimes idiosyncratic, English.

And then, in late 1999, Biriukovich heard about OpSail 2000, a grand gathering of tall ships, complete with a parade July 4 in New York Harbor with hundreds of vessels.

“I have never met people who were so happy to be there,” said Uhryniak, the OpSail coordinator, of her first meeting with the Biriukoviches.

The captain said it would have been unthinkable to ask his government, which was beset by financial troubles, for money. As it turned out, Ukraine used to have a tall ship of its own, a 300-foot beauty, according to Mike Lamperelli, an OpSail volunteer who has become one of Biriukovich’s many guardian angels. But he said that boat wound up in Western Europe after independence. So there was only the Bat’kivshchyna, manned by Biriukovich, his wife and a volunteer crew.

“Everyone said, ‘Oh my God, are they going to make it?’ ” Uhryniak said.

Biriukovich said he never had any doubt. But others, including his Canadian son-in-law, Roy Kellogg, were seized by moments of panic during the three months it took the Bat’kivshchyna to cross the Atlantic in the spring of 2000.

The first mishap occurred while still in the Dnieper River heading from Kiev into the Black Sea, when the ship ran aground, sending Capt. Biriukovich barreling into the toilet tank and breaking it.

The ship had no radar, and then lost its global positioning system in a storm in the Mediterranean. A new system, purchased in Spain, was apparently set according to the wrong satellite, sending the ship more than 1,000 miles off course, according to Kellogg, who dispatched the Coast Guard to look for his wife’s parents.

But the Bat’kivshchyna eventually made it to Norfolk, Va. A local church held a food drive, and, according to Kellogg, contributed so much “the ship almost sank.”

Then, they sailed to New York.

Lamperelli, the OpSail volunteer, was on the captain’s boat that overcast morning as she made her way into New York Harbor. The captain, dressed in his best whites, gazed at the Statue of Liberty and, according to Lamperelli, delivered his trademark phrase: “Everything is wonderful.”

Over the next three years, Biriukovich and his boat sailed the Erie Canal, down the Mississippi, across the Caribbean to Cuba, through the Panama Canal and up the West Coast.

To finance the trip, they sold crafts including “McLenin” T-shirts, flutes, lacquered boxes and, back in 2000, Matrushka dolls containing then-President Clinton containing Monica Lewinsky, and sometimes Hillary and Chelsea Clinton and occasionally a saxophone or a cigar. (The Clinton model has been discontinued.)

They also teamed up with the Children of Chernobyl Relief Fund. The toys delivered to Cuba went to Ukrainian children who were taken to the island nation to recover from the effects of radiation, according to the captain’s son-in-law.

Each winter, the Bat’kivshchyna stayed in a friendly port, making repairs and friends. Along the way, they were frequently assisted by volunteers, because it was always difficult for Biriukovich to get U.S. visas for Ukrainian crew members. Often, Americans joined the crew.

And once they got off the boat, many helped with financing or donated food and vodka.

“You can’t help but be inspired by Capt. Biriukovich,” said Dan Stetson, vice president of the Dana Point-based Ocean Institute, who has known Biriukovich since September.

Biriukovich had always planned to winter in Southern California and then head to Hawaii in the spring. An anonymous benefactor paid for his berth in Long Beach, according to Stetson.

But then he ran into trouble.

For the trip across the Pacific to Hawaii, and then to Australia and back to Kiev, Biriukovich wanted Ukrainian shipmates.

But for months, the U.S. Embassy in Kiev did not issue visas. Finally, friends went to Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn, who wrote letters on his behalf.

It’s unknown if Hahn’s intervention helped, but this spring the visas were issued, and Monday the crew arrived.

But there is still a problem: Four of the visas are for only 29 days, and one is for five days, which means they will have expired by the time the Bat’kivshchyna arrives in Hawaii. A sixth crewmate is Russian, and has no visa problems, Biriukovich said.

But Biriukovich intends to go to Hawaii anyway.

“I will sail there like pirate,” he joked. “What can I do? ... But expedition will continue. And every problem will stay behind us.”

Kellogg, his son-in-law and volunteer trip manager, said prevailing winds mean it makes more sense to head to the Galapagos Islands and then Tahiti.

What’s more, Kellogg said, he has not been able to locate a port for the Bat’kivshchyna in Hawaii.

Still, he warns Hawaiians to expect the boat soon.

“He’ll do it,” he said. “Don’t worry. Be happy. It’s my father-in-law.”