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Whatever happened to Whitbread sailing yacht Maiden?

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Tracy Edwards MBE changed the course of sailing history with her all-female Whitbread race crew - a story of determination that was immortalised in the 2018 documentary film Maiden . Now she’s using her famous yacht to alter the destinies of girls across the world...

Checking her email one summer’s day in 2014, pioneering yachtswoman-turned-philanthropist Tracy Edwards saw a message from a sender she didn’t recognise. Out of curiosity she opened it, and in doing so altered the course not only of her own life, but potentially the lives of millions of girls the world over.

The email came from a marina in Mahé, an island in the Seychelles. Over a glass of rosé at the Royal Ocean Racing Club in London, Edwards shares the message with me: “It said, ‘Did you know your beautiful boat is sitting here rotting? If someone doesn’t come and do something about her, we’re going to take her out and sink her.’ It was heartbreaking.”

The boat was Maiden , a 17.7-metre aluminium ocean racing yacht designed by Bruce Farr in 1979. Edwards had bought it second hand to contest the 1989-90 Whitbread Round the World Race (later the Volvo; now the Ocean Race). At 26, she skippered the first all-female crew to take on the challenge and, against the expectations of sceptics, won two of the race’s six legs, including the perilous Uruguay-to-Fremantle leg across the Southern Ocean. At the end of the race, after 167 days and 33,000 nautical miles Maiden finished second in class overall.

By the time that email came through in 2014, the boat wasn’t hers anymore; she’d sold it in 1990. And the marina was demanding €75,000 (£63,000). “It wasn’t what she was worth,” Edwards explains, “it was what they were owed. Her owner had skipped and just left her. She was in such a bad state, she wasn’t even worth scrap.”

Edwards didn’t have the money to spare. But – as someone for whom there is no such word as can’t – she was unfazed. She contacted Maiden’s original crew members, and between them they raised the money through crowdfunding. Two months later she was on a flight to Mahé, expecting to sail Maiden home. “I thought, ‘She can’t be that bad,’” she says. “But she was. We’d have died if we’d sailed her a mile.”

This time Edwards was in a quandary. But, as has happened more than once in her extraordinary life, the planets were aligning in her favour. She was booked to speak at a conference of the Association of Independent Travel Operators at a Dead Sea resort in Jordan – motivational speaking is one of many strings to her bow – an event that garnered much more press attention than one might have expected because of the story of the decaying boat. Word reached Princess Haya Bint al-Hussein, daughter of the late King Hussein of Jordan, Maiden’s original sponsor, who called her. “She said: ‘My brother sent me a press release saying you’ve rescued Maiden . What can I do to help?’”

The story of how Tracy Edwards, now 57, became a competitive sailor is the subject of two books and the recent feature film, Maiden , a documentary that grossed $3.5 million (£2.7m) in the US in the first three months of its release. But it’s a tale worth retelling nonetheless.

As a child, Edwards had dreamed of becoming a ballerina like her mother, who had danced with Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet, attending the performing arts school ArtsEd.

But although she retains the bearing and physique of a dancer – slight and slender, yet forged, one suspects, from steel and springs – Edwards quit at 12, when her widowed mother remarried. The family moved to Wales, and a volatile relationship with her stepfather turned her into a rebel. She was suspended from school 26 times and eventually expelled. Encouraged to travel by her mother, she went to Greece, where, still a teenager, she was working in a bar in Piraeus when the skipper of a motor yacht asked her if she would consider filling in as stewardess on charters. She didn’t hesitate. “I left that night and was on the boat the next day.”

Until then she’d had, she says, “zero” experience with boats, bar a short trip with her father from Hayling Island, on the south coast of England, to the nearby Isle of Wight when she was eight. She was seasick, and “vowed never to set foot on [a boat] again”. But this was a job, and she had a living to earn. And in any case, the yacht in question – Kovalam (now Lady May of Glandore ) – was an alluring prospect: a 31.5-metre motor yacht designed in 1929 by Philip & Son that had been used in the 1982 film of Agatha Christie’s Evil Under the Sun .

“She was beautiful,” recalls Edwards, who despite occasional seasickness soon found she loved the life aquatic. Autumn approached. “We ended up in Palma, and someone asked if I was doing the season in the Caribbean. So, I did my first transatlantic, this time on a sailing boat, and learned how to sail. On my second transatlantic I learned how to navigate.”

Over time – she reckons she covered about 250,000 nautical miles working on charter boats – she made the transition from stewardess to deckhand to first mate, thanks to a succession of “extraordinary” skippers. “They were such mentors. Every single one saw something in me and took time to change my life.”

The luckiest of her breaks came in 1985 off the coast of Massachusetts in Martha’s Vineyard, on a 31.6-metre ketch called Excalibur that was hired for a day charter by King Hussein of Jordan and his wife, Queen Noor. Edwards served them lunch, and the king engaged her in conversation, continuing to chat to her as she washed up afterwards.

“We shared the same interests,” she says. “He was a pilot, and I’d learned to navigate, and we both loved navigation. I love radios; he was a ham radio operator. And we both loved taking machinery apart. He asked me what I was going to do next, and I said what I really wanted was to do the 1985-86 Whitbread Round the World Race and that I’d tried [to sign on] a boat, but they didn’t want a girl. And he said: ‘You don’t strike me as someone who takes no for an answer. If you want to do this, you have to fight for it. You have to go back and get on that boat.’ And I realised then that was what I had to do.”

This time she was taken on as a cook. The 24-metre yacht, which like Maiden had been designed by Farr , was called Atlantic Privateer . Its skipper warned her at her interview that, in his opinion, “Girls [were] for shagging when we get into port.” But Edwards knew she could take care of herself, even though she was the only woman on the 18-strong crew (there were only four female crew, out of 230, in the entire race). Atlantic Privateer didn’t finish. But the experience galvanised her determination to try again – as skipper of her own all-female crew.

She placed an ad in Yachts & Yachting that read: “Wanted: girl sailors,” recruiting 11 women, all of whom were more experienced than she was. King Hussein, who had kept in touch, told her: “Leadership is not about being the best, it’s about bringing out the best in others.”

Edwards recalls: “He said, ‘You have to believe in people, trust people. If you truly love human beings and understand them, that’s the way to lead. With faith, honour and courage, anything is possible.’ That was his motto. I wrote it on a piece of paper and stuck it above my desk, and it went around the world with me stuck above the nav station.”

She needed a boat. A new one was beyond her, financially, but eventually she found Maiden , then called Prestige , and mortgaged her home to pay for it. Thanks to King Hussein, Royal Jordanian Airlines became the major sponsor. Three decades on and now newly restored, Maiden’s livery retains its grey and white as a gesture of gratitude to her mentor, who died in 1999. Which brings the story to King Hussein’s fourth daughter, Princess Haya’s, offer to help.

“You’ve rescued Dad’s boat,” she’d told Edwards when she heard about Maiden in Mahé, and asked how she could help. “So I said: ‘We need a lot of money to restore her.’ And she replied: ‘Well, I can take care of that. But what are you going to do with her?’.”

At that stage Edwards wasn’t certain. “I knew I wanted to do something meaningful with her. She’d changed my life, and I thought maybe she could change others’ too.” Princess Haya flew to London; the two met, and within two hours they came up with a plan. They would use Maiden to raise funds for a grant-making charity, the Maiden Factor Foundation, to support initiatives that help educate girls around the world.

Edwards, having become an ambassador for the UK’s National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children soon after her 1990 Whitbread achievement, has a history of supporting good causes. A patron of six projects, it made sense to start with those. It isn’t only culture and poverty that prevents girls from going to school, she explains, it can be something as simple as a lack of segregated toilets that deters them, hence the work of Fields of Life, a development organisation in East Africa, and now a beneficiary of the Maiden Factor Foundation. And Just a Drop builds wells in developing countries so that women and girls can spend time studying instead of spending hours fetching water for their villages.

Then there’s the literacy charity Room to Read, specifically working with girls in refugee camps in the Middle East, and Positive Negatives, which produces literary comics, animations and podcasts about contemporary social and humanitarian issues aimed at young girls. Last, but not least, the Girls’ Network mentors young women at risk of leaving school before their exams.

“We have a big problem in the West with girls dropping out at 15,” Edwards says, “and missing those really important years, which is something I’m very aware of.” She herself gave up on school at 15, but eventually earned a degree in psychology. “That really decreases their life choices. The Girls’ Network puts women who’ve achieved something in business, or in life, into schools to work with groups of girls, and it’s phenomenally successful in motivating them.”

Just as Maiden is proving to be. Towards the end of 2018, the yacht was ready to go to sea again, setting sail on what will be a three-year, round-the-world voyage, crewed entirely by women, aiming to raise both funds and awareness. She headed first for Malta, then Sri Lanka, Australia and New Zealand, where Steinlager 2 , her great rival and overall winner of the 1989-90 Whitbread Race greeted her.

From there she sailed across the Pacific to Hawaii and then to Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles – “All wealthy yachting centres where we know we can raise lots of money,” Edwards notes. The day we meet, the boat has just left San Diego and is heading, via the Panama Canal, for Antigua in the Caribbean. There had been a plan to go south along the Pacific Coast, but Hurricane Kika held the crew in port in Los Angeles for 10 days. "Thanks to climate change, hurricane season is so unpredictable now,” Edwards says.

The yacht has a practical role to play, too. “We have hundreds of schoolgirls come aboard,” Edwards says, “which is much scarier than the Southern Ocean, I can tell you. And we’ve got this amazing female crew who also give talks in schools. We can’t keep up with the number of schools that want us. Teachers love it.”

Because, she stresses, it’s not just about telling girls there’s nothing they can’t do. It’s equally about showing them. And Maiden is proof of where single-minded determination can get you. “She’s not an idea or a motto,” says Edwards, or a glib instruction to follow your dreams. “She’s an absolute, actual physical thing.”

And so she is: a gloriously restored and refitted manifestation of just what a young woman can achieve – and go on achieving – if she really puts her mind to it. themaidenfactor.org

First published in BOAT International's Life Under Sail in April 2020. Get this magazine sent straight to your door, or subscribe and never miss an issue.

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In 2014 Tracy discovered that Maiden had been abandoned in the pirate infested waters in the Indian Ocean. She set to work raising the funds to rescue her and bring her home to the UK to be restored to her former glory. Maiden was finally purchased in October 2016 and in by March 2017 she was on a ship to Southampton. She arrived on 24th April and was met by 7 of the original crew who took her to Hamble Yacht Services where she was lifted out of the water to begin her year-long restoration; in the same shed where she was refitted for the original race.

Tracy founded The Maiden Factor in the process of rescuing her beloved yacht Maiden. In 2016 she decided she wanted to do more than just restore Maiden, she also wanted to make sure she was used for something special. Tracy is Patron of, fundraises for and supports a number of small but effective charities who facilitate the education of girls around the globe. Once restored she will sail around the world raising funds for girls’ education. For Tracy, the drive to get girls who are currently denied the basic right of an education into school, is particularly poignant as she was expelled from school at 15. She now knows what she gave away.

She also wanted to pay tribute to the late King Hussein I as a thank you for his role in getting Maiden to the start line 28 years ago. His Majesty has many wonderful legacies but his vision of the equality of women through the education of girls is close to Tracy’s heart and a perfect way for her to remember her friend.

With over 30 years’ experience creating and running sailing projects, Tracy will oversee the entire programme. She will skipper Maiden until she gets to Jordan when Maiden’s new up and coming female skipper will take over. Tracy will also work with HRH Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein to make the vision a reality and get girls into school.

Camilla hails ‘brilliant’ all-female yacht crew who won round-the-world race

The Queen has praised a group of yachtswomen for their “brilliant” win in a global race that broke diversity barriers.

Camilla welcomed to her Clarence House home the crew of the Maiden, who became the first all-female outfit to triumph in a round-the-world yacht challenge when they won the Ocean Globe Race earlier this month.

“You’re doing a brilliant job, keep on doing it – that’s really important,” the Queen told the women, who are part of a project promoting the education of women and girls.

Heather Thomas, from Otley, West Yorkshire, captained Maiden to victory as the vessel raced for 153 days and crossed the finish line on April 16 at the Royal Yacht Squadron in Cowes, Isle of Wight.

She said after the champagne reception: “It was incredible after we’d found out we’d won.

“It’s a pretty historic moment for women’s sailing, I’m really happy with the result, the girls all worked really hard for it – so we’re proud of ourselves.”

The winning yacht was sailed by an international crew that included African, Caribbean and Middle Eastern women alongside others from the UK and Costa Rica.

Maiden was the brainchild of veteran yachtswoman Tracy Edwards , who skippered the boat during the 1989-90 Whitbread global yacht race with an all-female crew, before resurrecting the vessel as part of the Maiden Factor Foundation.

Ms Edwards, the founder and director of the foundation dedicated to the education of women and girls, said the organisation’s patron Whoopi Goldberg had challenged her to find a diverse crew.

She said: “For me this is the end of a 45-year fight for the equality of women within sailing and sport generally and actually women’s empowerment.

“Sailing is described as male, pale and stale. So with Maiden in 1989 we dealt with male and the stale bit, we didn’t deal with the pale bit.

“And when Whoopi Goldberg became our patron, she looked me square in the eye, and when she went ‘change it’. I went ‘OK’ so we did. So we put this incredible crew together because we want to change the face of sailing.”

The 2023-24 Ocean Globe Race, which marked the 50th anniversary of the first edition of the Whitbread round-the-world race, featured 14 boats representing eight countries.

The yachts raced over four legs, travelling from Cowes to Cape Town, Auckland and Punta del Este, Uruguay, before returning to the UK.

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Anne Diamond interviews Yachtswoman, Tracy Edwards, MBE

Join British journalist Anne Diamond as she embarks on an engaging conversation with y achtswoman, a uthor and a ctivist Tracy Edwards , MBE . Tracy gained international fame in 1990 as the skipper of the first all-female crew to compete in the Whitbread Round the World Race and became the first woman to be awarded the Yachtsman of the Year t rophy. Discover her inspiring story as a pioneer in the field of yachting as well as her favorite charities , and learn more during the question and answer session .

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Say hello to iconic British journalist and broadcaster Anne Diamond, OBE. She is best known for her pioneering work on morning shows in the United Kingdom during the 1980s—along with a legendary career in frontline television that has lasted for more than 40 years. From the fall of the Berlin Wall, Australia’s bicentenary, Charles and Diana’s wedding to interviews with Bette Davis, Ronald Reagan, Prince Philip—and even Archbishop Desmond Tutu in the nude—it has been, and continues to be, quite a journalistic journey for Anne. Join her for engaging conversations each week as she investigates the life and legacy of some of the world’s most fascinating people.

Tracy Edwards

Yachtswoman, author and activist Tracy Edwards, MBE, gained international fame in 1990 as the skipper of the first all-female crew to compete in the world’s toughest yacht race, the 33,000-mile Whitbread Round the World Race (now known as The Ocean Race). Her yacht, Maiden, won two legs of the competition and came in second overall in her class. For this feat, Tracy was awarded an MBE and became the first woman to receive the Yachtsman of the Year trophy.

In 2014, when Maiden was discovered in the Seychelles in a state of disrepair, Tracy raised funds to bring Maiden back home to the UK. And after she was restored to her former glory, the iconic yacht embarked on a three-year world tour in 2018 as a fundraising campaign for The Maiden Factor Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded by Tracy in an effort to promote the education of millions of girls all over the world.

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Tracy Edwards’ Maiden to compete in the new retro Whitbread Round the World Race

• Katy Stickland
• October 17, 2019

Tracy Edwards has announced that her 58ft Bruce Farr-designed Maiden will race in the Ocean Globe Race, the retro Whitbread Round the World Race

Tracy Edwards made history in 1989 as the skipper of the first all female crew to sail around the world in the Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race. Maiden won two legs and came second overall in her class. The best result for a British boat in the race since 1977.

Now Maiden could be racing the route again in the Ocean Globe Race (OGR), a retro Whitbread Round the World Race designed to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first event in 1973.

Organised by Don McIntyre, who was behind the 2018 Golden Globe Race , the 30,000 mile event is scheduled to start in Europe on 10 September 2023 and will have four legs taking in the Southern Ocean and the three great capes.

Stopovers will include South Africa, Australia or New Zealand and South America, before finishing back in Europe in April 2024.

Maiden won two legs in the 1989-90 Whitbread Round the World Race

Skippers from France, Finland and the UK have already committed to take part in the event including Edwards.

She recently told organisers: ‘With so many yachts from previous Whitbread races being rescued and restored, as has Maiden of course, it seems only fitting that we should race them around the world again. COUNT US IN!’

Maiden is currently sailing around the world as part of work for the not-for-profit The Maiden Factor , promoting girls’ education and raising money to directly support a group of charities  already working in the field.

Tracy Edwards is currently focussed on The Maiden Factor, promoting girls’ education around the world, but will she be tempted to skipper in the race?. Credit: Tim Anderson

Finland’s Tapio Lehtinen , a finisher in the 2018 Golden Globe Race, has entered a Swan 55 in the Adventure Class for production yachts between 47 – 55.25ft.

He has just taken ownership of the Olin Stephens designed yawl Galiana , one of two Swan 55s now entered in the 2023 Ocean Globe Race , and will set out from Southampton UK bound for Finland at the weekend.

First launched in 1970, Galiana is the second of 16 yachts to be built by Nautor to this design, which Lehtinen describes  as ‘the classiest and most beautiful of the early Swans.’

Tapio Lehtinen was the last to finish the GGR. Credit: Christophe Favreau/PPL/GGR

British yachtsman Alan Macmillan shares that view. He has entered his cutter rigged Swan 55 Ariana and is about to embark on a round the world cruise in preparation for the 2023 OGR.

Lehtinen, who has also re-entered the 2022 Golden Globe Race, sailed in the 1981 Whitbread as watch leader aboard Skopbank of Finland , and is using his OGR programmer to ‘blood’ the next generation of Finnish ocean sailors now graduating through the youth racing classes by introducing them to the Southern Ocean and the global racing scene.

This he hopes will secure a continuation of the Finnish round the world sailing legacy, which dates back to the days of the Gustaf Erikson windjammers and the theme of the Ocean Globe clipper route.

Demand for places in the Sayula Class for prescribed yachts between 57.4 and 65.5ft is equally high with five owners earmarking Swan 65s – sisterships to Sayula II , the original 1973/4 Race winner.

One is French entrant Dominique Dubois, owner of the Multiplast Boatyard in Vannes, who previously owned a Swan 65, but sold it a few years ago to buy an ultralight boat to compete in last year’s Route du Rhum solo transatlantic race.

Continues below…

Ocean Globe Race: Retro Whitbread Round the World race announced

The organisers of the 2018 Golden Globe Race have announced a new race. The Ocean Globe Race will follow the…

‘Powerful and inspirational’ Maiden documentary

The story of Tracy Edwards’ Maiden campaign in the 1989-90 Whitbread round the world Race still astonishes 30 years on,…

Tracy Edwards’ ‘Maiden’ returning to UK

Round-the-world yachtswoman Tracy Edwards‘ famous yacht Maiden, which was found abandoned on an Indian Ocean island last year, is to…

Golden Globe Race: Tapio Lehtinen’s barnacle blight

The last Golden Globe Race skipper Tapio Lehtinen has arrived back in Les Sables d'Olonne after 322 days alone at

He built all the Volvo 65’s, the giant record setting trimarans like Francis Joyon’s Idec Sport and Thomas Colville’s Sodebo , together with a series of race-winning IMOCA 60’s.

Commenting on the entry list, race chairman Don McIntyre said: ‘Many want to remain confidential at this stage but I can say we now have 12 confirmed entries representing Belgium, Denmark, France, Finland, Scotland, Spain, Sweden, UK and USA with the strongest enquires coming from Finland and France. There is also strong interest from the current owners of Sir Peter Blake’s 1981/2 Whitbread yacht Ceramco NZ and the French Whitbread winning yacht L’Esprit d’Equipe.’

The UK’s Alan Macmillan promises strong competition from his cutter rigged Swan 55, Ariana

Sir Chay Blyth , who competed in two of the early Whitbread races onboard Great Britain II , and claimed nine of the 12 trophies on offer in the ’73 Race, has also endorsed the OGR.

‘Delighted to hear that a 50th Anniversary edition of the Whitbread is being launched. The Ocean Globe will be a great adventure as well as a great race for participants. What a great challenge they can set themselves. My congratulations to the organiser; it is such a bold and exciting move! he said.

Recent Rule Changes

Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the first fully crewed 1973 Whitbread Race and sailed in similar yachts with 1970’s equipment including sextants and cassette music tapes, the 2023 OGR gives ordinary sailors the opportunity to race around the Globe for the first time in nearly 30 years.

Entries are limited to approved production ocean racing yachts between 47 and 65.5ft designed prior to 1988. There are also 8 places available in a third Flyer Class for yachts that competed in the first three Whitbread races and other production ocean certified sail-training yachts. Tracy Edwards’ Maiden is eligible because the yacht first raced in the 1981/2 Whitbread as Disque D’or .

Together with the pre-1988 designed Nautor Swan range of yachts, the Nicholson 55, Grand Soleil 52, Oyster Lightwave 48 and Baltic 48 production yachts are also now type approved.

Some OGR entrants were challenged with the idea of removing extensive electronics, carbon spars or painting high visibility patches on beautiful teak decks as required under the pre-Notice of Race. Following extensive discussions, entrants no longer need to remove existing electronics, just disable them temporarily by removing control heads. High visibility cockpit dodgers will also substitute for the high vis. deck paint, and carbon spars fitted before July 1st 2019 are also approved.

Tapio Lehtinen has entered the yawl rigged Swan 55, Galiana in the race

The larger yachts and ex-Whitbread entries use Dyneema/Spectra runners and check stays for safety reasons, as well as halyards. All now approved. Spinnaker snuffers were shown to be available in 1973 and are now approved for safety reasons with amateur crew, even though they were not used in the original Whitbread Race.

Following six months of discussion with builders, surveyors and owners, it has also been shown that each keel is unique with regard to engineering integrity. While the final responsibility rests with the skipper, it is now agreed that the independent qualified surveyor responsible for inspecting an entry prior to the start of the OGR, will consider the yacht’s history and condition before determining if the keel needs to be removed for service.

The use of satellite communications equipment is severely restricted except for safety, and no live video streaming is allowed, but the scheduled once-a-week satellite phone call to race control, now includes delivery of one satellite photo from the yacht.

For the smallest Adventure Class for yachts down to 47ft, the minimum mixed gender crew required has been reduced to six.

All OGR outer garments must predominantly be of a colour that easily distinguishes with the wearer in the ocean.

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers visit http://www.djreprints.com.

https://www.barrons.com/news/sailing-legend-tracy-edwards-yacht-maiden-set-for-swansong-9fcdabda

• FROM AFP NEWS

Sailing Legend Tracy Edwards' Yacht Maiden Set For Swansong

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Thirty-three years after British round-the-world yachtswoman Tracy Edwards and her all-female crew sailed into Southampton to a hero's welcome, her yacht Maiden is about to embark on a final race.

Record-breaking Edwards and her team defied expectations in 1990 to come second in the gruelling Whitbread race. They survived a tornado on the final leg and went the last five days without food.

Now, after being rescued from the scrapyard and painstakingly restored, Maiden is ready for one last stab at yachting glory.

"She's reaching the point now where she's had her day," Edwards told AFP at London's St Katharine Dock, where Maiden is moored.

The yacht, built in 1977, will be retired next year after she has competed in this year's Ocean Globe Race -- the Whitbread's successor -- which will start from Southampton on the southern English coast on September 10.

Once again Edwards, whose Whitbread crew was the first all-female team to take part, has put together a women-only line-up -- this time drawn from all corners of the globe.

The crew, skippered by the UK's Heather Thomas, includes yachtswomen from India and Antigua as well as an Afghan film-maker.

Since Maiden's restoration, Edwards has been sailing the boat around the world as part of her charity work to promote girl's education and empowerment.

The subject is close to Edwards' heart after her own experience of discrimination as a young yachtswoman in a male-dominated sport.

One skipper famously rejected her saying his crew wouldn't be the "only racing team in the world with a girl".

That, she says, made her more determined.

When glory came, the yachting world was astounded. Many had not even expecting her team to finish the first leg.

Edwards went on to become the first woman to receive the Yachtsman of the Year trophy.

She hopes the 2023 crew will inspire girls and young women who might think sailing is not for "people like them".

The search for the team took her "far afield" sparked by a meeting with Whoopi Goldberg, patron of her girl's education charity The Maiden Factor.

"When we met her in New York she looked at me and said 'where are all the black girls in sailing?' And she was right," Edwards said.

Edwards' Maiden Factor works with charities and girls educational programmes to help those with no access to education.

Edwards is particularly preoccupied by the plight of women in Afghanistan since the return of the Taliban government two years ago.

"I feel angry... . Women are being cancelled. I just can't find the words," she said.

Since August 2021, girls have been barred from schools and universities and most UN and NGO jobs.

Afghan video journalist Najiba Noori, 28, who will accompany the crew, said she was honoured.

"My generation had some chances, some opportunities, it was not easy but we started fighting and we achieved," she said, adding that she was "really worried" for the next generation.

"Their future is dark, it's a tragedy," she said.

After the Ocean Globe race, Maiden will resume her "world tour", promoting girl's education for a last few months before retirement.

Her final itinerary will include Jordan.

Jordan's late King Hussein was Maiden's first sponsor after a chance meeting in the US when he gave Edwards his palace phone number and urged her "to give him a shout".

Since the king's death in 1999, his daughter Princess Haya bint Hussein has continued to offer support and help.

Hussein was a "great mentor" and encouraged Edwards to ignore critics who thought competitive sailing was too tough for women, she said.

"He was way ahead of his time. Girls in Jordan went to school, university, wore trousers, had jobs and sat in the government.

"He was visionary, an extraordinary man," she said.

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Sailing legend tracy edwards' yacht maiden set for swansong.

Thirty-three years after British round-the-world yachtswoman Tracy Edwards and her all-female crew sailed into Southampton to a hero's welcome, her yacht Maiden is about to embark on a final race.

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Practical Boat Owner

• Digital edition

Sailors urged to join Tracy Edwards to welcome the Maiden yacht home

• Laura Hodgetts
• April 20, 2017

Tracy Edwards reunited with Maiden

Yachtswoman Tracy Edwards is calling for sailors to join a welcoming party to greet the former race yacht Maiden when she returns to the UK.

Rolldock Sky

The once-resplendent Maiden , which is now in need of extensive refitting, will be arriving in the Solent aboard the Netherlands-flagged cargo ship Rolldock Sky this Sunday, 23 April, bound for Southampton Docks.

Track the ship’s progress at http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:3655466/mmsi:244620571/vessel:ROLLDOCK%20SKY

Maiden will be towed from Southampton Docks to Hamble Yacht Services on the River Hamble on Monday, 24 April, where she will be lifted out of the water on Tuesday morning.

The 17.7m (58ft) former racing yacht sailed into the history books in 1990 when she completed the gruelling Whitbread Round the World Race, with skipper Tracy Edwards and an historic all-female crew, a chieving two leg victories along the way.

The Maiden yacht with Tracy Edwards and crew. Credit PPL

Edwards had to sell Maiden at the end of the trail-blazing race and moved onto other sailing projects including breaking seven world records with another all-female crew sailing around the globe non-stop.

Maiden went through a procession of owners, and was discovered abandoned three years ago and left to rot on the quayside on an Indian Ocean island, prompting Edwards to launch a fundraising campaign to save her beloved ’13th member of the crew’.

Maiden was shipped from Victoria, Mahe, Seychelles on 27 March.

Edwards now plans for the boat to be a figurehead of the Maiden Factor charity, dedicated to empowering girls through education. Extensive re-fitting will take ahead of a re-launch planned to coincide with the finish of the 2017-18 Volvo Round the World Yacht Race.

The Whitbread race, which was renamed the Volvo Ocean Race for the 2001/02 edition, will celebrate its 45-year history with a Legends Race on the final leg of the 2017-18 edition from Gothenburg to The Hague.

Any yacht to have featured in the Whitbread Round the World Race or Volvo Ocean Race, dating back to 1973-74, is welcome to join the 2018 Legends Race. The race will be run over the same course, and coincide with, the closing leg of the Volvo Ocean Race 2017-18, which starts from Gothenburg on 21 June.

Edwards MBE  is planning to reunite her original female crew and Maiden for the 2018 race.

Edwards urged sailors to join this Monday’s Maiden welcoming party, to ‘sail out and greet her or come and see us!’ She added: ‘We are a bit excited here. ‘The Rolldock Sky will be arriving in the Solent on Sunday 23 April at about 0800 and then heading towards Southampton Docks. Maiden is on deck!! ‘On Monday 24 April she will be offloaded from the ship at berth 109, Southampton Docks at 1000 and towed round to the river Hamble and Hamble Yacht Services. ‘On Tuesday 25 April she will come out of the water at Hamble Yacht Services at 1100.’

Follow Maiden’s adventures at www.themaidenfactor.org

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Crash of a Tupolev TU-104B in Sverdlovsk: 7 killed

• Places - European, Western and Northern Russia

YEKATERINBURG: FACTORIES, URAL SIGHTS, YELTSIN AND THE WHERE NICHOLAS II WAS KILLED

Sverdlovsk oblast.

Sverdlovsk Oblast is the largest region in the Urals; it lies in the foothills of mountains and contains a monument indicating the border between Europe and Asia. The region covers 194,800 square kilometers (75,200 square miles), is home to about 4.3 million people and has a population density of 22 people per square kilometer. About 83 percent of the population live in urban areas. Yekaterinburg is the capital and largest city, with 1.5 million people. For Russians, the Ural Mountains are closely associated with Pavel Bazhov's tales and known for folk crafts such as Kasli iron sculpture, Tagil painting, and copper embossing. Yekaterinburg is the birthplace of Russia’s iron and steel industry, taking advantage of the large iron deposits in the Ural mountains. The popular Silver Ring of the Urals tourist route starts here.

In the summer you can follow in the tracks of Yermak, climb relatively low Ural mountain peaks and look for boulders seemingly with human faces on them. You can head to the Gemstone Belt of the Ural mountains, which used to house emerald, amethyst and topaz mines. In the winter you can go ice fishing, ski and cross-country ski.

Sverdlovsk Oblast and Yekaterinburg are located near the center of Russia, at the crossroads between Europe and Asia and also the southern and northern parts of Russia. Winters are longer and colder than in western section of European Russia. Snowfalls can be heavy. Winter temperatures occasionally drop as low as - 40 degrees C (-40 degrees F) and the first snow usually falls in October. A heavy winter coat, long underwear and good boots are essential. Snow and ice make the sidewalks very slippery, so footwear with a good grip is important. Since the climate is very dry during the winter months, skin moisturizer plus lip balm are recommended. Be alert for mud on street surfaces when snow cover is melting (April-May). Patches of mud create slippery road conditions.

Yekaterinburg

Yekaterinburg (kilometer 1818 on the Trans-Siberian Railway) is the fourth largest city in Russia, with of 1.5 million and growth rate of about 12 percent, high for Russia. Located in the southern Ural mountains, it was founded by Peter the Great and named after his wife Catherine, it was used by the tsars as a summer retreat and is where tsar Nicholas II and his family were executed and President Boris Yeltsin lived most of his life and began his political career. The city is near the border between Europe and Asia.

Yekaterinburg (also spelled Ekaterinburg) is located on the eastern slope of the Ural Mountains in the headwaters of the Iset and Pyshma Rivers. The Iset runs through the city center. Three ponds — Verkh-Isetsky, Gorodskoy and Nizhne-Isetsky — were created on it. Yekaterinburg has traditionally been a city of mining and was once the center of the mining industry of the Urals and Siberia. Yekaterinburg remains a major center of the Russian armaments industry and is sometimes called the "Pittsburgh of Russia.". A few ornate, pastel mansions and wide boulevards are reminders of the tsarist era. The city is large enough that it has its own Metro system but is characterized mostly by blocky Soviet-era apartment buildings. The city has advanced under President Vladimir Putin and is now one of the fastest growing places in Russia, a country otherwise characterized by population declines

Yekaterinburg is technically an Asian city as it lies 32 kilometers east of the continental divide between Europe and Asia. The unofficial capital of the Urals, a key region in the Russian heartland, it is second only to Moscow in terms of industrial production and capital of Sverdlovsk oblast. Among the important industries are ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, machine building and metalworking, chemical and petrochemicals, construction materials and medical, light and food industries. On top of being home of numerous heavy industries and mining concerns, Yekaterinburg is also a major center for industrial research and development and power engineering as well as home to numerous institutes of higher education, technical training, and scientific research. In addition, Yekaterinburg is the largest railway junction in Russia: the Trans-Siberian Railway passes through it, the southern, northern, western and eastern routes merge in the city.

Accommodation: There are two good and affordable hotels — the 3-star Emerald and Parus hotels — located close to the city's most popular landmarks and main transport interchanges in the center of Yekaterinburg. Room prices start at RUB 1,800 per night.

History of Yekaterinburg

Yekaterinburg was founded in 1723 by Peter the Great and named after his wife Catherine I. It was used by the tsars as a summer retreat but was mainly developed as metalworking and manufacturing center to take advantage of the large deposits of iron and other minerals in the Ural mountains. It is best known to Americans as the place where the last Tsar and his family were murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918 and near where American U-2 spy plane, piloted by Gary Powers, was shot down in 1960.

Peter the Great recognized the importance of the iron and copper-rich Urals region for Imperial Russia's industrial and military development. In November 1723, he ordered the construction of a fortress factory and an ironworks in the Iset River Valley, which required a dam for its operation. In its early years Yekaterinburg grew rich from gold and other minerals and later coal. The Yekaterinburg gold rush of 1745 created such a huge amount of wealth that one rich baron of that time hosted a wedding party that lasted a year. By the mid-18th century, metallurgical plants had sprung up across the Urals to cast cannons, swords, guns and other weapons to arm Russia’s expansionist ambitions. The Yekaterinburg mint produced most of Russia's coins. Explorations of the Trans-Baikal and Altai regions began here in the 18th century.

Iron, cast iron and copper were the main products. Even though Iron from the region went into the Eiffel Tower, the main plant in Yekaterinburg itself was shut down in 1808. The city still kept going through a mountain factory control system of the Urals. The first railway in the Urals was built here: in 1878, the Yekaterinburg-Perm railway branch connected the province's capital with the factories of the Middle Urals.

In the Soviet era the city was called Sverdlovsk (named after Yakov Sverdlov, the man who organized Nicholas II's execution). During the first five-year plans the city became industrial — old plants were reconstructed, new ones were built. The center of Yekaterinburg was formed to conform to the historical general plan of 1829 but was the layout was adjusted around plants and factories. In the Stalin era the city was a major gulag transhipment center. In World War II, many defense-related industries were moved here. It and the surrounding area were a center of the Soviet Union's military industrial complex. Soviet tanks, missiles and aircraft engines were made in the Urals. During the Cold War era, Yekaterinburg was a center of weapons-grade uranium enrichment and processing, warhead assembly and dismantlement. In 1979, 64 people died when anthrax leaked from a biological weapons facility. Yekaterinburg was a “Closed City” for 40 years during the Cold Soviet era and was not open to foreigners until 1991

In the early post-Soviet era, much like Pittsburgh in the 1970s, Yekaterinburg had a hard struggle d to cope with dramatic economic changes that have made its heavy industries uncompetitive on the world market. Huge defense plants struggled to survive and the city was notorious as an organized crime center in the 1990s, when its hometown boy Boris Yeltsin was President of Russia. By the 2000s, Yekaterinburg’s retail and service was taking off, the defense industry was reviving and it was attracting tech industries and investments related to the Urals’ natural resources. By the 2010s it was vying to host a world exhibition in 2020 (it lost, Dubai won) and it had McDonald’s, Subway, sushi restaurants, and Gucci, Chanel and Armani. There were Bentley and Ferrari dealerships but they closed down

Transportation in Yekaterinburg

Getting There: By Plane: Yekaterinburg is a three-hour flight from Moscow with prices starting at RUB 8,000, or a 3-hour flight from Saint Petersburg starting from RUB 9,422 (direct round-trip flight tickets for one adult passenger). There are also flights from Frankfurt, Istanbul, China and major cities in the former Soviet Union.

By Train: Yekaterinburg is a major stop on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Daily train service is available to Moscow and many other Russian cities.Yekaterinburg is a 32-hour train ride from Moscow (tickets RUB 8,380 and above) or a 36-hour train ride from Saint Petersburg (RUB 10,300 and above). The ticket prices are round trip for a berth in a sleeper compartment for one adult passenger). By Car: a car trip from Moscow to Yekateringburg is 1,787 kilometers long and takes about 18 hours. The road from Saint Petersburg is 2,294 kilometers and takes about 28 hours.

Regional Transport: The region's public transport includes buses and suburban electric trains. Regional trains provide transport to larger cities in the Ural region. Buses depart from Yekaterinburg’s two bus stations: the Southern Bus Station and the Northern Bus Station.

Regional Transport: According the to Association for Safe International Road Travel (ASIRT): “Public transportation is well developed. Overcrowding is common. Fares are low. Service is efficient. Buses are the main form of public transport. Tram network is extensive. Fares are reasonable; service is regular. Trams are heavily used by residents, overcrowding is common. Purchase ticket after boarding. Metro runs from city center to Uralmash, an industrial area south of the city. Metro ends near the main railway station. Fares are inexpensive.

“Traffic is congested in city center. Getting around by car can be difficult. Route taxis (minivans) provide the fastest transport. They generally run on specific routes, but do not have specific stops. Drivers stop where passengers request. Route taxis can be hailed. Travel by bus or trolleybuses may be slow in rush hour. Trams are less affected by traffic jams. Trolley buses (electric buses) cannot run when temperatures drop below freezing.”

Entertainment, Sports and Recreation in Yekaterinburg

The performing arts in Yekaterinburg are first rate. The city has an excellent symphony orchestra, opera and ballet theater, and many other performing arts venues. Tickets are inexpensive. The Yekaterinburg Opera and Ballet Theater is lavishly designed and richly decorated building in the city center of Yekaterinburg. The theater was established in 1912 and building was designed by architect Vladimir Semyonov and inspired by the Vienna Opera House and the Theater of Opera and Ballet in Odessa.

Vaynera Street is a pedestrian only shopping street in city center with restaurants, cafes and some bars. But otherwise Yekaterinburg's nightlife options are limited. There are a handful of expensive Western-style restaurants and bars, none of them that great. Nightclubs serve the city's nouveau riche clientele. Its casinos have closed down. Some of them had links with organized crime. New dance clubs have sprung up that are popular with Yekaterinburg's more affluent youth.

Yekaterinburg's most popular spectator sports are hockey, basketball, and soccer. There are stadiums and arenas that host all three that have fairly cheap tickets. There is an indoor water park and lots of parks and green spaces. The Urals have many lakes, forests and mountains are great for hiking, boating, berry and mushroom hunting, swimming and fishing. Winter sports include cross-country skiing and ice skating. Winter lasts about six months and there’s usually plenty of snow. The nearby Ural Mountains however are not very high and the downhill skiing opportunities are limited..

Sights in Yekaterinburg

Sights in Yekaterinburg include the Museum of City Architecture and Ural Industry, with an old water tower and mineral collection with emeralds. malachite, tourmaline, jasper and other precious stone; Geological Alley, a small park with labeled samples of minerals found in the Urals region; the Ural Geology Museum, which houses an extensive collection of stones, gold and gems from the Urals; a monument marking the border between Europe and Asia; a memorial for gulag victims; and a graveyard with outlandish memorials for slain mafia members.

The Military History Museum houses the remains of the U-2 spy plane shot down in 1960 and locally made tanks and rocket launchers. The fine arts museum contains paintings by some of Russia's 19th-century masters. Also worth a look are the History an Local Studies Museum; the Political History and Youth Museum; and the University and Arboretum. Old wooden houses can be seen around Zatoutstovsya ulitsa and ulitsa Belinskogo. Around the city are wooded parks, lakes and quarries used to harvest a variety of minerals. Weiner Street is the main street of Yekaterinburg. Along it are lovely sculptures and 19th century architecture. Take a walk around the unique Literary Quarter

Plotinka is a local meeting spot, where you will often find street musicians performing. Plotinka can be described as the center of the city's center. This is where Yekaterinburg holds its biggest events: festivals, seasonal fairs, regional holiday celebrations, carnivals and musical fountain shows. There are many museums and open-air exhibitions on Plotinka. Plotinka is named after an actual dam of the city pond located nearby (“plotinka” means “a small dam” in Russian).In November 1723, Peter the Great ordered the construction of an ironworks in the Iset River Valley, which required a dam for its operation. “Iset” can be translated from Finnish as “abundant with fish”. This name was given to the river by the Mansi — the Finno-Ugric people dwelling on the eastern slope of the Northern Urals.

Vysotsky and Iset are skyscrapers that are 188.3 meters and 209 meters high, respectively. Fifty-story-high Iset has been described by locals as the world’s northernmost skyscraper. Before the construction of Iset, Vysotsky was the tallest building of Yekaterinburg and Russia (excluding Moscow). A popular vote has decided to name the skyscraper after the famous Soviet songwriter, singer and actor Vladimir Vysotsky. and the building was opened on November 25, 2011. There is a lookout at the top of the building, and the Vysotsky museum on its second floor. The annual “Vysotsky climb” (1137 steps) is held there, with a prize of RUB 100,000. While Vysotsky serves as an office building, Iset, owned by the Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company, houses 225 premium residential apartments ranging from 80 to 490 square meters in size.

Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center

The Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center (in the city center: ul. Yeltsina, 3) is a non-governmental organization named after the first president of the Russian Federation. The Museum of the First President of Russia as well as his archives are located in the Center. There is also a library, educational and children's centers, and exposition halls. Yeltsin lived most of his life and began his political career in Yekaterinburg. He was born in Butka about 200 kilometers east of Yekaterinburg.

The core of the Center is the Museum. Modern multimedia technologies help animate the documents, photos from the archives, and artifacts. The Yeltsin Museum holds collections of: propaganda posters, leaflets, and photos of the first years of the Soviet regime; portraits and portrait sculptures of members of Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of various years; U.S.S.R. government bonds and other items of the Soviet era; a copy of “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, published in the “Novy Mir” magazine (#11, 1962); perestroika-era editions of books by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Vasily Grossman, and other authors; theater, concert, and cinema posters, programs, and tickets — in short, all of the artifacts of the perestroika era.

The Yeltsin Center opened in 2012. Inside you will also find an art gallery, a bookstore, a gift shop, a food court, concert stages and a theater. There are regular screenings of unique films that you will not find anywhere else. Also operating inside the center, is a scientific exploritorium for children. The center was designed by Boris Bernaskoni. Almost from the its very opening, the Yeltsin Center has been accused by members of different political entities of various ideological crimes. The museum is open Tuesday to Sunday, from 10:00am to 9:00pm.

Where Nicholas II was Executed

On July, 17, 1918, during this reign of terror of the Russian Civil War, former-tsar Nicholas II, his wife, five children (the 13-year-old Alexis, 22-year-old Olga, 19-year-old Maria and 17-year-old Anastasia)the family physician, the cook, maid, and valet were shot to death by a Red Army firing squad in the cellar of the house they were staying at in Yekaterinburg.

Ipatiev House (near Church on the Blood, Ulitsa Libknekhta) was a merchant's house where Nicholas II and his family were executed. The house was demolished in 1977, on the orders of an up and coming communist politician named Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin later said that the destruction of the house was an "act of barbarism" and he had no choice because he had been ordered to do it by the Politburo,

The site is marked with s cross with the photos of the family members and cross bearing their names. A small wooden church was built at the site. It contains paintings of the family. For a while there were seven traditional wooden churches. Mass is given ay noon everyday in an open-air museum. The Church on the Blood — constructed to honor Nicholas II and his family — was built on the part of the site in 1991 and is now a major place of pilgrimage.

Nicholas and his family where killed during the Russian civil war. It is thought the Bolsheviks figured that Nicholas and his family gave the Whites figureheads to rally around and they were better of dead. Even though the death orders were signed Yakov Sverdlov, the assassination was personally ordered by Lenin, who wanted to get them out of sight and out of mind. Trotsky suggested a trial. Lenin nixed the idea, deciding something had to be done about the Romanovs before White troops approached Yekaterinburg. Trotsky later wrote: "The decision was not only expedient but necessary. The severity of he punishment showed everyone that we would continue to fight on mercilessly, stopping at nothing."

Ian Frazier wrote in The New Yorker: “Having read a lot about the end of Tsar Nicholas II and his family and servants, I wanted to see the place in Yekaterinburg where that event occurred. The gloomy quality of this quest depressed Sergei’s spirits, but he drove all over Yekaterinburg searching for the site nonetheless. Whenever he stopped and asked a pedestrian how to get to the house where Nicholas II was murdered, the reaction was a wince. Several people simply walked away. But eventually, after a lot of asking, Sergei found the location. It was on a low ridge near the edge of town, above railroad tracks and the Iset River. The house, known as the Ipatiev House, was no longer standing, and the basement where the actual killings happened had been filled in. I found the blankness of the place sinister and dizzying. It reminded me of an erasure done so determinedly that it had worn a hole through the page. [Source: Ian Frazier, The New Yorker, August 3, 2009, Frazier is author of “Travels in Siberia” (2010)]

“The street next to the site is called Karl Liebknecht Street. A building near where the house used to be had a large green advertisement that said, in English, “LG—Digitally Yours.” On an adjoining lot, a small chapel kept the memory of the Tsar and his family; beneath a pedestal holding an Orthodox cross, peonies and pansies grew. The inscription on the pedestal read, “We go down on our knees, Russia, at the foot of the tsarist cross.”

Books: The Romanovs: The Final Chapter by Robert K. Massie (Random House, 1995); The Fall of the Romanovs by Mark D. Steinberg and Vladimir Khrustalëv (Yale, 1995);

See Separate Article END OF NICHOLAS II factsanddetails.com

Execution of Nicholas II

According to Robert Massie K. Massie, author of Nicholas and Alexandra, Nicholas II and his family were awakened from their bedrooms around midnight and taken to the basement. They were told they were to going to take some photographs of them and were told to stand behind a row of chairs.

Suddenly, a group of 11 Russians and Latvians, each with a revolver, burst into the room with orders to kill a specific person. Yakob Yurovsky, a member of the Soviet executive committee, reportedly shouted "your relatives are continuing to attack the Soviet Union.” After firing, bullets bouncing off gemstones hidden in the corsets of Alexandra and her daughters ricocheted around the room like "a shower of hail," the soldiers said. Those that were still breathing were killed with point black shots to the head.

The three sisters and the maid survived the first round thanks to their gems. They were pressed up against a wall and killed with a second round of bullets. The maid was the only one that survived. She was pursued by the executioners who stabbed her more than 30 times with their bayonets. The still writhing body of Alexis was made still by a kick to the head and two bullets in the ear delivered by Yurovsky himself.

Yurovsky wrote: "When the party entered I told the Romanovs that in view of the fact their relatives continued their offensive against Soviet Russia, the Executive Committee of the Urals Soviet had decided to shoot them. Nicholas turned his back to the detachment and faced his family. Then, as if collecting himself, he turned around, asking, 'What? What?'"

"[I] ordered the detachment to prepare. Its members had been previously instructed whom to shoot and to am directly at the heart to avoid much blood and to end more quickly. Nicholas said no more. he turned again to his family. The others shouted some incoherent exclamations. All this lasted a few seconds. Then commenced the shooting, which went on for two or three minutes. [I] killed Nicholas on the spot."

Nicholas II’s Initial Burial Site in Yekaterinburg

Ganina Yama Monastery (near the village of Koptyaki, 15 kilometers northwest of Yekaterinburg) stands near the three-meter-deep pit where some the remains of Nicholas II and his family were initially buried. The second burial site — where most of the remains were — is in a field known as Porosyonkov (56.9113628°N 60.4954326°E), seven kilometers from Ganina Yama.

On visiting Ganina Yama Monastery, one person posted in Trip Advisor: “We visited this set of churches in a pretty park with Konstantin from Ekaterinburg Guide Centre. He really brought it to life with his extensive knowledge of the history of the events surrounding their terrible end. The story is so moving so unless you speak Russian, it is best to come here with a guide or else you will have no idea of what is what.”

In 1991, the acid-burned remains of Nicholas II and his family were exhumed from a shallow roadside mass grave in a swampy area 12 miles northwest of Yekaterinburg. The remains had been found in 1979 by geologist and amateur archeologist Alexander Avdonin, who kept the location secret out of fear that they would be destroyed by Soviet authorities. The location was disclosed to a magazine by one his fellow discovers.

The original plan was to throw the Romanovs down a mine shaft and disposes of their remains with acid. They were thrown in a mine with some grenades but the mine didn't collapse. They were then carried by horse cart. The vats of acid fell off and broke. When the carriage carrying the bodies broke down it was decided the bury the bodies then and there. The remaining acid was poured on the bones, but most of it was soaked up the ground and the bones largely survived.

After this their pulses were then checked, their faces were crushed to make them unrecognizable and the bodies were wrapped in bed sheets loaded onto a truck. The "whole procedure," Yurovsky said took 20 minutes. One soldiers later bragged than he could "die in peace because he had squeezed the Empress's -------."

The bodies were taken to a forest and stripped, burned with acid and gasoline, and thrown into abandoned mine shafts and buried under railroad ties near a country road near the village of Koptyaki. "The bodies were put in the hole," Yurovsky wrote, "and the faces and all the bodies, generally doused with sulfuric acid, both so they couldn't be recognized and prevent a stink from them rotting...We scattered it with branches and lime, put boards on top and drove over it several times—no traces of the hole remained.

Shortly afterwards, the government in Moscow announced that Nicholas II had been shot because of "a counterrevolutionary conspiracy." There was no immediate word on the other members of the family which gave rise to rumors that other members of the family had escaped. Yekaterinburg was renamed Sverdlov in honor of the man who signed the death orders.

For seven years the remains of Nicholas II, Alexandra, three of their daughters and four servants were stored in polyethylene bags on shelves in the old criminal morgue in Yekaterunburg. On July 17, 1998, Nicholas II and his family and servants who were murdered with him were buried Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg along with the other Romanov tsars, who have been buried there starting with Peter the Great. Nicholas II had a side chapel built for himself at the fortress in 1913 but was buried in a new crypt.

Near Yekaterinburg

Factory-Museum of Iron and Steel Metallurgy (in Niznhy Tagil 80 kilometers north of Yekaterinburg) a museum with old mining equipment made at the site of huge abandoned iron and steel factory. Officially known as the Factory-Museum of the History of the Development of Iron and Steel Metallurgy, it covers an area of 30 hectares and contains a factory founded by the Demidov family in 1725 that specialized mainly in the production of high-quality cast iron and steel. Later, the foundry was renamed after Valerian Kuybyshev, a prominent figure of the Communist Party.

The first Russian factory museum, the unusual museum demonstrates all stages of metallurgy and metal working. There is even a blast furnace and an open-hearth furnace. The display of factory equipment includes bridge crane from 1892) and rolling stock equipment from the 19th-20th centuries. In Niznhy Tagil contains some huge blocks of malachite and

Nizhnyaya Sinyachikha (180 kilometers east-northeast of Yekaterinburg) has an open air architecture museum with log buildings, a stone church and other pre-revolutionary architecture. The village is the creation of Ivan Samoilov, a local activist who loved his village so much he dedicated 40 years of his life to recreating it as the open-air museum of wooden architecture.

The stone Savior Church, a good example of Siberian baroque architecture. The interior and exterior of the church are exhibition spaces of design. The houses are very colorful. In tsarist times, rich villagers hired serfs to paint the walls of their wooden izbas (houses) bright colors. Old neglected buildings from the 17th to 19th centuries have been brought to Nizhnyaya Sinyachikha from all over the Urals. You will see the interior design of the houses and hear stories about traditions and customs of the Ural farmers.

Verkhoturye (330 kilometers road from Yekaterinburg) is the home a 400-year-old monastery that served as 16th century capital of the Urals. Verkhoturye is a small town on the Tura River knows as the Jerusalem of the Urals for its many holy places, churches and monasteries. The town's main landmark is its Kremlin — the smallest in Russia. Pilgrims visit the St. Nicholas Monastery to see the remains of St. Simeon of Verkhoturye, the patron saint of fishermen.

Ural Mountains

Ural Mountains are the traditional dividing line between Europe and Asia and have been a crossroads of Russian history. Stretching from Kazakhstan to the fringes of the Arctic Kara Sea, the Urals lie almost exactly along the 60 degree meridian of longitude and extend for about 2,000 kilometers (1,300 miles) from north to south and varies in width from about 50 kilometers (30 miles) in the north and 160 kilometers (100 miles) the south. At kilometers 1777 on the Trans-Siberian Railway there is white obelisk with "Europe" carved in Russian on one side and "Asia" carved on the other.

The eastern side of the Urals contains a lot of granite and igneous rock. The western side is primarily sandstone and limestones. A number of precious stones can be found in the southern part of the Urals, including emeralds. malachite, tourmaline, jasper and aquamarines. The highest peaks are in the north. Mount Narodnaya is the highest of all but is only 1884 meters (6,184 feet) high. The northern Urals are covered in thick forests and home to relatively few people.

Like the Appalachian Mountains in the eastern United States, the Urals are very old mountains — with rocks and sediments that are hundreds of millions years old — that were one much taller than they are now and have been steadily eroded down over millions of years by weather and other natural processes to their current size. According to Encyclopedia Britannica: “The rock composition helps shape the topography: the high ranges and low, broad-topped ridges consist of quartzites, schists, and gabbro, all weather-resistant. Buttes are frequent, and there are north–south troughs of limestone, nearly all containing river valleys. Karst topography is highly developed on the western slopes of the Urals, with many caves, basins, and underground streams. The eastern slopes, on the other hand, have fewer karst formations; instead, rocky outliers rise above the flattened surfaces. Broad foothills, reduced to peneplain, adjoin the Central and Southern Urals on the east.

“The Urals date from the structural upheavals of the Hercynian orogeny (about 250 million years ago). About 280 million years ago there arose a high mountainous region, which was eroded to a peneplain. Alpine folding resulted in new mountains, the most marked upheaval being that of the Nether-Polar Urals...The western slope of the Urals is composed of middle Paleozoic sedimentary rocks (sandstones and limestones) that are about 350 million years old. In many places it descends in terraces to the Cis-Ural depression (west of the Urals), to which much of the eroded matter was carried during the late Paleozoic (about 300 million years ago). Found there are widespread karst (a starkly eroded limestone region) and gypsum, with large caverns and subterranean streams. On the eastern slope, volcanic layers alternate with sedimentary strata, all dating from middle Paleozoic times.”

Southern Urals

The southern Urals are characterized by grassy slopes and fertile valleys. The middle Urals are a rolling platform that barely rises above 300 meters (1,000 feet). This region is rich in minerals and has been heavily industrialized. This is where you can find Yekaterinburg (formally Sverdlovsk), the largest city in the Urals.

Most of the Southern Urals are is covered with forests, with 50 percent of that pine-woods, 44 percent birch woods, and the rest are deciduous aspen and alder forests. In the north, typical taiga forests are the norm. There are patches of herbal-poaceous steppes, northem sphagnous marshes and bushy steppes, light birch forests and shady riparian forests, tall-grass mountainous meadows, lowland ling marshes and stony placers with lichen stains. In some places there are no large areas of homogeneous forests, rather they are forests with numerous glades and meadows of different size.

In the Ilmensky Mountains Reserve in the Southern Urals, scientists counted 927 vascular plants (50 relicts, 23 endemic species), about 140 moss species, 483 algae species and 566 mushroom species. Among the species included into the Red Book of Russia are feather grass, downy-leaved feather grass, Zalessky feather grass, moccasin flower, ladies'-slipper, neottianthe cucullata, Baltic orchis, fen orchis, helmeted orchis, dark-winged orchis, Gelma sandwart, Krasheninnikov sandwart, Clare astragalus.

The fauna of the vertebrate animals in the Reserve includes 19 fish, 5 amphibian and 5 reptile. Among the 48 mammal species are elks, roe deer, boars, foxes, wolves, lynxes, badgers, common weasels, least weasels, forest ferrets, Siberian striped weasel, common marten, American mink. Squirrels, beavers, muskrats, hares, dibblers, moles, hedgehogs, voles are quite common, as well as chiropterans: pond bat, water bat, Brandt's bat, whiskered bat, northern bat, long-eared bat, parti-coloured bat, Nathusius' pipistrelle. The 174 bird bird species include white-tailed eagles, honey hawks, boreal owls, gnome owls, hawk owls, tawny owls, common scoters, cuckoos, wookcocks, common grouses, wood grouses, hazel grouses, common partridges, shrikes, goldenmountain thrushes, black- throated loons and others.

Activities and Places in the Ural Mountains

The Urals possess beautiful natural scenery that can be accessed from Yekaterinburg with a rent-a-car, hired taxi and tour. Travel agencies arrange rafting, kayaking and hiking trips. Hikes are available in the taiga forest and the Urals. Trips often include walks through the taiga to small lakes and hikes into the mountains and excursions to collect mushrooms and berries and climb in underground caves. Mellow rafting is offered in a relatively calm six kilometer section of the River Serga. In the winter visitor can enjoy cross-mountains skiing, downhill skiing, ice fishing, dog sledding, snow-shoeing and winter hiking through the forest to a cave covered with ice crystals.

Lake Shartash (10 kilometers from Yekaterinburg) is where the first Ural gold was found, setting in motion the Yekaterinburg gold rush of 1745, which created so much wealth one rich baron of that time hosted a wedding party that lasted a year. The area around Shartash Lake is a favorite picnic and barbecue spot of the locals. Getting There: by bus route No. 50, 054 or 54, with a transfer to suburban commuter bus route No. 112, 120 or 121 (the whole trip takes about an hour), or by car (10 kilometers drive from the city center, 40 minutes).

Revun Rapids (90 kilometers road from Yekaterinburg near Beklenishcheva village) is a popular white water rafting places On the nearby cliffs you can see the remains of a mysterious petroglyph from the Paleolithic period. Along the steep banks, you may notice the dark entrance of Smolinskaya Cave. There are legends of a sorceress who lived in there. The rocks at the riverside are suited for competitive rock climbers and beginners. Climbing hooks and rings are hammered into rocks. The most fun rafting is generally in May and June.

Olenii Ruchii National Park (100 kilometers west of Yekaterinburg) is the most popular nature park in Sverdlovsk Oblast and popular weekend getaway for Yekaterinburg residents. Visitors are attracted by the beautiful forests, the crystal clear Serga River and picturesque rocks caves. There are some easy hiking routes: the six-kilometer Lesser Ring and the 15-kilometer Greater Ring. Another route extends for 18 km and passes by the Mitkinsky Mine, which operated in the 18th-19th centuries. It's a kind of an open-air museum — you can still view mining an enrichment equipment here. There is also a genuine beaver dam nearby.

Among the other attractions at Olenii Ruchii are Druzhba (Friendship) Cave, with passages that extend for about 500 meters; Dyrovaty Kamen (Holed Stone), created over time by water of Serga River eroding rock; and Utoplennik (Drowned Man), where you can see “The Angel of Sole Hope”., created by the Swedish artist Lehna Edwall, who has placed seven angels figures in different parts of the world to “embrace the planet, protecting it from fear, despair, and disasters.”

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Federal Agency for Tourism of the Russian Federation (official Russia tourism website russiatourism.ru ), Russian government websites, UNESCO, Wikipedia, Lonely Planet guides, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, National Geographic, The New Yorker, Bloomberg, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Yomiuri Shimbun and various books and other publications.

Updated in September 2020

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