Antigua Sailing Week: Irina escaped war in Ukraine thanks to sailing

We are at Antigua Sailing Week, the great Caribbean sailing festival where our Ida Castiglioni is on the hunt for stories(here the first episode and the second episode). Today Ida met at the dock with Irina Shakarovska, a 30-year-old Ukrainian who was “spared” the war by sailing. Here is his story.

Irina the sailor

I met Irina along a dock at the Antigua Yacht Club while she was working aboard the Pan, the catamaran on which in five days she will take to the sea with her fiancé, who is an Italian sailor, to cross the Atlantic and bring the boat to Greece.

Our video interview

On the deck, a large pot in which a chocolate cream is cooling, with which she will then fill the cake she has baked. She wants me to taste it and gives me a teaspoon: good and sweet! She is a slim 30-something, tireless in doing and organizing: she has long lists of repairs and parts to fix on board and is a bit anxious about the crossing for two that is coming up.

Iryna was born in Ukraine, in a small village located near Kharkiv, 15 km from the Russian border. Her parents are there, they don’t have underground shelters but they don’t want to leave and they don’t want to become Russians.

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She was spared the war by pure chance. She was working as a stewardess on a superyacht in the Mediterranean and-as she did every other year-after fixing the boat at the end of the season, she was spending the coldest months, from November to February-March, at her parents’ house.

In mid-February 2022, the crew manager had called for her to leave early: the owner wanted to put the boat in the water in early spring. And so Iryna had left Kharkiv in a great hurry, just two days before Putin launched his ‘special operation’.

For her, the choice of that job had come about somewhat by chance: her parents had an acquaintance who lived in that strip of land that goes from Odessa along the Black Sea, below and beyond Moldova, in front of Serpent Island. In this area south of Ukraine a large number of people do sea jobs, and there are many opportunities for young people to find a good place on cruise ships.

Irina likes the idea and so she moves to Odessa to attend, after finishing high school, a special school where they learn the jobs of the sea. These are long-term courses where they study languages and teach how to overcome emergencies, such as putting out a fire or coping with damage, how to use communication tools and how to be professional. And it is to these schools that the men commissioned by masters of private ships and large motoryachts to train their crews turn.

The first job is in 2016 on a yacht based in Turkey, the Jaaaa, a 24 m motoryacht with 3 crew. Particular is the next contract: ten months spent between 2017 and 2018 aboard Al Salamah, the 139 m yacht on which the King of Saudi Arabia makes short sailings in the Red Sea from Jeddah. Iryna, who is in charge of the ship’s 8 decks, is one 94 crew members who work alongside the 56 staff members. The staff is in charge of the lounges, outdoor spaces, cabins and kitchens. They are joined at sea by dozens of military personnel who walk around armed.

On board there is room for 40 guests in 22 cabins. The shuttle has a huge garage and all kinds of amenities: from 3 hospitals, to beauty salons, to art galleries. The yacht, designed by Terence Disdale and built by Lurssen, originally built for Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, later gifted to the Crown Prince of Bahrain, had eventually come into the ownership of the King of Saudi Arabia.

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The next embarkation, for the 2018 season, is on Entre Cielos, a 31m vintage sailboat with a crew of 5, based in Piraeus. The next embarkation is on Gatto, a 32m Italian motoryacht with a crew of 6, where Iryna works from 2019 to 2023. And it is during Gatto’s Horta stop in the Azores islands that she meets the Italian sailor returning with his sailboat from the Caribbean. Since then, only sailboats and now an ocean crossing in two on the Pan, a Marc Pinta Pastorale, 60″ catamaran.

Meanwhile, how the racing is going at Antigua Sailing Week.

Two victories for Fox Hunt

After an off day on April 30, which saw crews compete on the beach in a series of prize games, racing resumed yesterday with two regattas. No May 1 festivities in Antigua and variable weather conditions with light winds and a downpour of rain.

In the Racing 1 class, Roy Disney’s Volvo 70 Pyewacket also won these last two races, after dominating all the previous ones, while 2nd place was taken by VOR65 Sailing Poland and VO65 Sisi.

In Racing 2, the X Yachts XP50 DNR won both races, followed by the Swan 58 WakeWolker and the Beneteau First 47.7 Dauntless.

In Racing 3 both races won by RP 37 Warthop while in 2nd place were the two British J122s; El Ocaso and Oystercatcher on Liquid.

In the Racing 4 class, Carlo Falcone’s Caccia alla Volpe (boat that is 47 years old) took two first places. Also on board were the two winners of the Young America’s Cup in Barcelona, Federico Colaninno and Rocco Falcone, Carlo’s son. In 2nd place were the J105 More Zessin and the Frers 46 Quintessence. Today the last races of this Antigua Sailing Week are scheduled, followed by the big party that usually accompanies the final prize giving.