Chapter 24

(“Чорне море,” is what she said, ) “The Black Sea!” is what she meant. Had she been a Greek born between 800 and 300 BC, she would have called the water the Euxine Sea, the “hospitable sea”. Eight thousand years BCE. she might have lived as much as 120 miles out on a great fertile plain surrounding a huge fresh water lake. Earthquakes and a rising Atlantic ocean inundated that fertile plain. It probably happened more slowly than the stories but faster than science believes. Surely within the span of two lives. Catastrophic events must be rapid enough for mankind to notice.

Now the water is salt ... but less saline than the Aegean or the Med. The Flint sat a little deeper in the water, fresh water is less buoyant than salt.

The mountains surrounding the sea and the differences in salinity east to west create a distinctive weather pattern. At the mouth of the Bosphorus we encountered 10 to 20 knot easterlies and a beam reach for two days when the wind shifted out of the south and a down hill run all the way to Odessa.

We fished. Trolling, we caught Black Sea bass, tuna, salmon and mackerel. There was one terrifying evening when a sturgeon cooperated on the hook. Krys (Khrystyna Kucherenko, our new hand.) was on watch turning her trick at the helm when the fifteen foot surf casting rod bent and the rod tip hit the water. The boat lost two knots of speed over ground and the jerk had the crew surging on deck wondering what we had hit.