Maxim Gorky Cruise Ship Accident in Svir

When passing the gateway of the Nizhne-Svirskaya Hydroelectric power plant, we were puzzled by the Maxim Gorky cruise ship of the Q-040 project, standing at the lower wall, in river jargon "Austrian" (at the place of construction), as well as "sideboard" or "glass" (due to the large area of glazing). Motor ships of this class are the most modern and comfortable on Russian rivers, so they work exclusively with foreign tourists.

As it turned out, he had very good reasons for parking-a large hole in the bow. As it turned out, during the entrance to the lock channel, a squall hit, and the ship leaned its nose on the corner of the channel wall. By the way, our motor ship was also strongly motanulo in front of the lock. The most amazing thing is that most of the day was calm and the river was like a mirror.

It was absolutely impossible to go to Ladoga Lake in such a hole, so the cruise administration found an original solution - tourists were given an unscheduled banquet in the highest category and with free hot drinks, and then they offered to increase the time spent in St. Petersburg by two days by reducing the cruise and leave there in an accelerated way by land, visiting a couple of unscheduled attractions as a bonus on the way. Naturally, no one began to make a scandal, as foreign pensioners have long been bored with looking at the deserted shores. And they were taken to Valaam Island from St.Petersburg on a high-speed hydrofoil ship "Comet". Everything was done so clearly that many tourists did not even guess about the ship's accident.

Well, "Maxim" empty and accompanied by a tug was driven to St. Petersburg, where the hole was patched up and a few days later the ship again took on board tourists. I saw him a year later and found no trace of him, even though I knew where to look.