Today with this article we start the cycle of publications devoted to our contemporaries who form the "face" of domestic yachting. Many of them have already become legends during their lifetime, and some of them only give hope to see their glorious future. And we will start with the city which historically became the ancestor of navigation in Russia - St. Petersburg.
Vladimir Loginov. Patriarch
Vladimir Ilyich - this name alone already sounds serious to our ear.




But he also has a Nobel Prize, even if it's not quite what you think!
During the half-life of the state, perhaps it was Vladimir Ilyich who largely kept St. Petersburg's sails from final collapse, holding at his own expense the Baltic regatta and a number of other major competitions (including the first world championship in the history of St. Petersburg). And how did it all begin?
«The day I sailed, I remembered for life. It was September 14, 1959. We lived on Karpovka, near the Mozhaisk Academy. We built a raft with the boys, launched them. It immediately began to fall apart. I was only 6 years old, I couldn't
It's been half a century since then. But the St. Petersburg patriarch of sails is
Daniel Gavrilov. Polyarnik
A sailing polar explorer and




Go under sails up to 81° 35' N. - is not to go to the forts.
And with all this Daniel is very young - he set a record at the age of
« I don't just want to swim - I want to combine swimming with
Alexei Rusetsky. Businessman .
One of the founders (paired with his brother) of the company.

Initially it was supposed to export to Finland sails sewn in St. Petersburg - and, I must say, at the beginning it worked.
«The understanding that one should work in the opposite direction came after one of the exhibitions at the then BMP
Viktor Los and Oleg Chugunov...
These people are known as the creators of the
Oleg Chugunov. Coach
The whole idea was initiated by a St. Petersburg businessman Viktor Moose. Having met in 2006 with Oleg Chugunov, the senior coach of SHVSM, he expressed to him the idea which in a couple of years led to the official creation of the Sailboat. The club is slowly becoming



The club has the only simulator available for practicing the skills of driving a dinghy - in general, the only one in Russia.
«Our goal is very simple, first of all, to develop yachting in
Victor Moose. Creator .
It was difficult for the organizers of the new club to reconvene coaches - many of them threw their sails, went into business. Not everybody was ready to change the established life with such difficulty.



Few people believed in the idea of not the most famous businessman, but Viktor was serious, having spent more than 30 million rubles on the club and the purchase of the mattress.
That's how he managed to convince people by creating the core of the Sailboat. And with almost no material return. «There are things in life where you can't look for profit. They don't look for it in the family, do they»? That's how he argued his altruism in creating the Sailboat. These words, I think, well illustrate his attitude to his brainchild. «I see a club in the future not commercial, but some social organization that unites a group of like-minded people in which we jointly develop and approve the curriculum, programs, training systems. The amount of the monthly tuition fee was consciously chosen from such a calculation that it was within the power of an ordinary St. Petersburg family. This is a public social program. The program for all».
Unfortunately, last year Viktor was seriously injured in a sports plane crash and is now undergoing serious treatment. ItBoat wishes the creator of the Sailboat a speedy recovery!
Sergei Konovalov. Master
Sergey is well known, perhaps, to any yachtsman who wants to dress» his boat well«. Having inherited from his father - a famous Soviet craftsman - his experience in sewing sails, he created his own workshop.

In fact, the brand of «Parusa Konovalova» today is almost 50 years old.
Although it started as a funny mishap. Father brought Sergey as an apprentice to his rival Vladislav Prokhorov from the Central
« I listened to him, opening my mouth, and I had only one question at that time: why and how
What about today? Today Sergey produces piece sails (cruise and racing) by D4 technology - perhaps, the most advanced for today, and his workshop is one of the most well-equipped, and not only in Russia. Having achieved everything himself, Sergey has no illusions about supporting small business in our country: «any high-ranking official with his heartfelt recitative does not cause anything but a curve of smirk in the population, understands everything that talk about supporting entrepreneurship is demagoguery, however, like all other speeches about the wonderful transformations in our lives».
Artem Basalkin. Olympic hope
Artem is a very visible person in the sails of St. Petersburg: he has been a member of the national team for eight years now (now in class 49er). Repeated champion of the city and country, he was European champion and bronze medalist at the World Championship (all junior).
The way of Artem (and his older sister Anna) to the sail was the same - all the first steps for them and for them his father made. In a small, newly built Ukrainian town Yuzhnyi (ammonia plant and port), he found the issue of the magazine "Boats and Yachts" with drawings of windsurfer and patterns of sails. He made the first shell, his wife sewed a sail. Later, with the help of the port management, he achieved the creation of a children's sailing school - right in the boiler house of a regular, general education school. That's how the dinghies were worn - from the boiler room to the water. And today this club is located in the same place.

«Base and school are very important for an athlete. For anyone. Of course, for me and Anya everything - in the sense of entering the sail - was done by my father. And then his club. The club became strong, even members of the Ukrainian national team trained with us and one of the then European champions. That's where my first success came to me - second place in the Ukrainian championship in the Optimist class. Look, all over the world like this: almost anyone who achieved
And now I want to be a professional yachtsman. And I will seriously fight for selection for this and the next Olympics - it's at least".
Vladislav Akimenko. Tutor
Today Vladislav Ivanovich is not a «person from the party». Rather, he is an employee for the future, of those who talk a little, but try to do

«The only way out of this situation can be the creation of the "Federal Reserve Training Center", where consolidated efforts will accumulate funds, promising athletes, the latest developments in sports science in the training of athletes of higher qualification. Finally, it will provide an opportunity to experiment and find new ways to improve athletic performance without involving the first numbers of the national team until the effectiveness of the proposed methods is proved.
And I am even ready to sell my Olympic silver medal to prepare a crew capable of taking the Olympic award!
Natalya Fedorova. Organizer
Until recently Natasha was one of the SPSU leaders and she is the organizer and promoter of the international White Nights sailing regatta «- the Palace of Congresses Cup», which has, by the way, the first (i.e. the highest) ISAF grade. The
The answer is simple: the second grade will allow inviting more Russian athletes to the regatta, today the official level of the regatta sets too high a bar before them. Not all of them have a good enough ISAF rating to be able to get to it.

«She sailed in 1997. It was funny - I wanted to build a stable, and bought a yacht. With the owner of the territory did not agree on a place, she was upset. Immediately my colleagues showed the yacht from afar. I saw the spinnaker and realized that "this" must be mine. And the very next day, she bought this boat (Arizona). But she tried to combine the sail with the horses until last year when she made her final choice for the sail.
The finish of the Volvo Race was a failure? You know, there was a choice: to sail it the way it was - or not to sail it at all.
The question of moving it to Stockholm was almost a question of the last few days, because even though we received
However, the editors of itBoat have a slightly different opinion on this issue. The event, which could have been remembered by the residents of the city for a long time, was more than sluggish. Liquid fireworks, dead fakes, and the gift of a cheap car navigator to the winner of the regatta does not fit into any gates!
Boris Lashkov. SB3 Motor
In the motor-yachting world of St. Petersburg Boris is known even more than in sailing - his company Nord Star is a dealer of Princess and Nimbus in the North-West and distributor of Bayliner throughout Russia.
However, his sailing activity is also very visible. In his youth Boris raced the «Tornado», took first places in the city and even was among the top 10 in the USSR. Today he represents Moody's cruise sailing boats in the country, and is also the main driving force in the dynamically growing association of Laser SB3 class, in the fact that in this class now suddenly found the real life, most of the credit - Boris. The fleet has grown by a dozen units since last year, and the coming season threatens to be a serious competition «for the single calibre»« Emka».
Boris attracts his «motor» clients to sail with his usual vigor and straightforwardness. «I just come and say, "You buy a boat [SB3] and we»'ll sort it out there.
Oleg Zherebtsov. Master of considerable forms.
Oleg Zherebtsov became famous a few years ago when he created Team Russia and the boat "Kasatka" to participate in the Volvo Ocean Race 2008/09 round-the-world sailing race. He was known in the business community as the creator and owner of the largest retail chain "Lenta" at the time, which was sold last year. Now Oleg is engaged in family, high-tech pharmaceutical production and races small sailing boats for his pleasure.





His focus is now on the development of the Laser SB3 class, of which he is president. However, the character does not allow him to be satisfied with just a chair - just recently it became known that the crew of his boat Team Russia took "gold" at the 1st Laser SB3 Championship of the Russian Asoociation held on March 10-11 in Portuguese city Cascais. The team also successfully competes at the Laser SB3 World Sailing Cup, winning the first three stages of the Cup and leading the overall standings.
By the way, the transition from porous VOR boats to Lasers passed through the 12-meter class and was, we can say, predetermined - last year Oleg Zherebtsov as part of the international crew won the World Championships in Flensburg (Germany). And in his interview after the winning finish, he confessed:
"Plans for next year: win the World Championships in the SB3 Laser class and the World Championships in the 12 meter class".
Well, dreams come true: as they say, the kid said - the kid did!