'Influence of My Heart'
With its massive white superstructure, radio towers, bridge wings, radar housing, its big, square funnel, and a constellation of portholes, the 101,877 deadweight ton Russian looks like an auxiliary downtown moored at Pier 23-25, as it awaits its turn at one of the port's grain elevators.
From the perspective of the apron alongside, though, the Budennyy ceases to be a city and becomes a mountain. The hull, 837 feet long, towers like a steel cliff above the narrow dock; the climb up the accommodation ladder is an ascent of Everest.
After that huffing, puffing climb, as well as several more flights of steps and a warren of windowless passageways inside, it is somehow surprising to find that the king of the mountain is a mere mortal, fiftyish, with wide, expressive eyes, a sincere and somewhat shy smile, and a fringe of dark hair wreathing his head.
Capt. Konstantin Nikiforov, dressed casually in a long-sleeved shirt and a pullover sweater, apologizes in turn for his lack of a uniform, the only-slightly disheveled state of his office, and his halting English.
Nikiforov first encountered salt water at 10, when his parents moved to the Estonian port of Tallinn, on the Baltic Sea.
"I saw first time the sea," he says, the English words perhaps a bit disordered but the sentiment clear. "It is influence of my heart that I love it all my life."
Nikiforov later entered the Soviet merchant marine academy, where his training included a six-month tour as a cadet aboard Tovarisch, a square-rigger acquired from Germany as reparations after World War II. The U.S. Coast Guard barque Eagle, acquired by America under the same circumstances, is a sister ship to Tovarisch.
Nikiforov graduated from the academy in 1954. After better than 30 years at sea, the honeymoon that began when he boarded his first ship in the Black Sea port of Odessa has mellowed into a mature marriage of man and career.
"When I was young," Nikiforov says of a life at sea, "I was enjoy. Now, I am accustomed."
Budennyy is one of several Soviet ships in port to load grain this week. It can hold a lot of it -- 90,000 tons, to be exact -- but Nikiforov frets that because of the 40-foot draft limitation at the grain elevators, he can only fill her gaping holds two-thirds full.
Once his ship is loaded, the voyage to her homeport of Novorossisk will take 22 to 25 days, depending largely on what the stormy Atlantic throws at her. A bad storm may require a midocean detour, extending the voyage a day or two.
Nikiforov debunks a misconception many rookie officers have about the handling of large ships versus the handling of smaller ships: "Sometimes, young cadets say bigger ship, easier to sail. But a big ship, sailing in the ocean, is very difficult to sail."
"A middle-size ship, ride up and down with waves. But a big ship, weather beats them more," the waves pounding the great hull ("boom! boom! boom!") rather than carrying it up and over.
But it won't be until Monday or Tuesday that the Budennyy can start loading grain. There are five other ships, not all Soviet, in line ahead. One of the other Russians, tied up at the Union Equity elevator, is the Khariton Greku ("Greek Chariot"). Nikiforov said that occasionally, when several of his country's ships are in
port at one time, old merchant-marine schoolmates will find each other.
"My first mate has a friend on the Greku," Nikiforov says, recalling that neither knew the other was there, and having not seen each other since they left the academy, they at first barely recognized one another.
"They don't see each other for 30 years, and they meet in Galveston," Nikiforov says with a chuckle.
Nikiforov is at sea six months at a stretch, then has two months off. When the Budennyy docks in Novorossisk at the end of each tour, Nikiforov heads home to Odessa, where he has a family including two sons and a blond-haired, 2-year-old grandson.
Of his hometown, which with a population of 1.2 million compares in size with Houston, Nikiforov says "Odessa is more beautiful, more ancient." He describes Odessa as "a very big port, first-class, plenty of ships from all countries."
As for the U.S.A., Nikiforov says he has called at New Orleans, "a very interesting and ancient town," but "very different, of course," from his home. "It (New Orleans) is very interesting, but very dangerous at night."
As for Galveston -- where he has docked once before -- the one thing that strikes Nikiforov is the relative lack of sidewalks.
"Everyone has a car -- and use only car" to get where they're going, he says, with an amused grin.
