Winter Boating

A patrol boat from the Mehikoorma border post on Lake Teploe, on the Estonia-Russia border
January 17, 2026 - Jürgen Puistaja / Scanpix / LETA

Lake LämmijärvTeploe
Small gray placemark shows lake location

Russian Be-200

Russian Be-200 and Italian Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft

Not something you see everyday. From Wikipedia: The Beriev Be-200 Altair is a jet-powered amphibious flying boat. It has a capacity of 3,200 US gallons of water, or up to 72 passengers.

Ämari Lennubaas Military Air Base Estonia

The Italian Typhoon took off from the Amari Air Base in Estonia.

Beriev aircraft have appeared here a couple of times.

Headline of the Day

Immortal Regiment march on May 9, 2017, Tallinn, Estonia © Sputnik / Sputnik/Vadim Anzupov

EU state to issue fines for celebrating WW2 victory over Nazis

Understandably, Estonia has mixed feelings about the Soviet victory over the Nazis. Title is from RT, the Russian propaganda machine. I don't really understand what's going on in Ukraine. America says Russia's attack was unprovoked, Russia says you done crossed the line with your provocations. I suspect both Russia and America are actually worried about China and decided to have a proxy war to try out their new weapons. I mean, there's no substitute for testing under fire. Also lets them beat the war drum and so drum up more funding for new armaments.

The Fifth Woman, Or Sinking Ferry Redux

Stu put up a post a couple of days ago about a ferry sinking off Zanzibar. At the time I was just starting on The Fifth Woman by Henning Mankell, and one of the first things that comes up in this book is the sinking of the ferry MS Estonia just ouside of Tallin, Estonia, back in 1994. I remember reading about the Estonia disaster when it happened. In particular there was an article in a hydraulic engineering magazine about a new kind of lock for sea doors. Unfortunately, there were no pictures of the MS Estonia, so it was very hard to visualize what went wrong. Now, however, with the wide reach of the internet, we have pictures at our beck and call. Even the Wikipedia article has one, though it's not very good. This one is better.

From the Wikipedia article: "The bow visor was under-designed for the conditions Estonia was operating in (the ferry was designed for coastal waters, not open regions like the Baltic Sea)..."

I had imagined the doors to be big slabs fitted to the sides of bow. Being as the whole bow is the door, I can see how repeated pounding by the waves could have easily stressed the latches to the breaking point. They would, after all be hitting the door up and back, the same direction it would move when opening. Not a good idea for rough seas.

Update April 2015: Reading about deep sea diving, I came across another very similar ferry disaster from just a few years earlier. This was the sinking of the MS Herald of Free Enterprise in 1987 just outside of port in Belgium.

Update January 2018. When daring duaghter went to Africa a few years ago she took a ferry to Zanzibar, possibly the same one. Count my blessings.

Update December 2019 removed some extraneous html format tags.