Yang Jing slept well at night without any dreams. When he opened his eyes, it was already dawn.
Old Ivan gets up even earlier. At his age, he is prone to a common problem among the elderly - not sleeping enough.
"Mr. Yang, are you up? Did you like yesterday's barbecue?"
Yang Jing smiled and gave Old Ivan a thumbs up, "Victor, thank you so much for letting me taste the most delicious barbecue I have ever eaten in my life yesterday."
"Haha, as long as you like it. In fact, Mr. Alekperov even comes to Semii several times a year just to taste Alexander's barbecue skills."
"Well, Mr. Valentin's cooking skills are really great. I have never eaten such delicious barbecue. I never thought that ordinary barbecue could become a kind of art in the hands of Mr. Valentin."
"Since you like it, I will ask this old guy to cook another meal for you when we come back."
Yang Jing nodded with a smile. This kind of delicious food always makes people linger.
Old Ivan looked at his watch and said, "It's seven o'clock now. Shall we continue on today?"
Yang Jing looked up into the distance and asked, "Victor, are we entering the mountainous area ahead?"
"That's right. After passing Semii, we will reach the mountainous area ahead. The river will continue to narrow, the water flow will continue to accelerate, and there are several reservoirs and locks waiting for us ahead."
"Well, now that we are in the mountains, for safety's sake, we will only sail during the day and try not to sail at night if possible."
Old Ivan opened his mouth and wanted to say something, but when he saw Yang Jing's firm tone, he nodded to show that he understood.
The Siberian Endeavour slowly left the dock and began to accelerate. After leaving the city of Semiy, Yang Jing could clearly see that they had indeed entered the mountainous area. The originally straight river channel began to become winding in the mountainous area.
However, the mountains nearby are not very high, at best they can only be considered hills. But as the yacht continues upstream, the peaks on both sides of the river become higher and higher, from tens of meters to over a hundred meters and then to several hundred meters.
After the yacht sailed upstream for three hours, a tall dam appeared in front of everyone. This was the first time they encountered a dam since leaving Omsk.
After World War II, in order to make better use of the hydropower resources of the Irtysh River, the former Soviet Union began to build reservoirs and dams in the upper reaches of the Irtysh River. The largest reservoir was the Bukhtamar Reservoir built with the help of Lake Zaisan. The reservoir in front of us was also built in the 1960s, but its scale is far less than that of the Bukhtamar Reservoir further upstream.
The length of the dam is only 300 meters, but on the west side of the dam, there is a long lock that allows ships traveling upstream and downstream of the Irtysh River to pass freely through this lock.
However, passing through the lock is a rather troublesome thing. Not only does it require carefulness, but it also wastes time.
Fortunately, the ship lock of this dam is just the simplest single-stage ship lock. When passing through the ship lock, the yacht only needs to go through one lift to pass through the ship lock, which greatly saves the time of passing through the ship lock. For example, the ship lock of the Three Gorges Dam in China, it takes at least four hours for a ship to pass through the five-stage ship lock.
This single-stage lock wasted nearly an hour of Yang Jing's time. However, when the yacht passed through the lock and entered the reservoir in front, the scenery immediately made people feel relaxed and happy.
The widest river channel in the mountainous area is less than 300 meters, but after passing through the ship lock, the water surface in front suddenly widens from several hundred meters to five or six kilometers. The suddenly open scenery really gives people an excellent enjoyment of seeing a new world after a dark tunnel.
After passing through the lock, old Ivan handed the rudder to his assistant, and he walked onto the deck leisurely.
"If you want to reach Zaisan Lake, you need to pass through a small reservoir before you can reach the Bukhtamar Reservoir. However, the lock of the Bukhtamar Reservoir is a four-level lock. It takes at least three hours to pass through that lock."
Yang Jing nodded and said, "There are so many abundant water resources in the upper reaches of the Irtysh River. If we don't make good use of them, it would be a waste of natural resources. In my opinion, there are still not enough reservoirs built in the upper reaches of this river. If it were the group of hydropower construction maniacs in China, they would not build five or six reservoirs within a hundred kilometers of the river. It would be a shame to the world, the earth, and the air!"
Old Ivan burst into laughter at Yang Jing's words.
"Although doing so can make good use of water resources, it is definitely a bad thing for the local ecological environment and shipping. Mr. Yang, you may not know that when the Soviet government decided to build reservoirs in the river section above Omsk, it planned to build thirteen reservoirs. However, many local people were very opposed to it, and finally only four reservoirs were built, one of which was built on a tributary of the Irtysh River."
Yang Jing couldn't help but sigh and said, "Your people are really good. If it were in our country, as long as the higher-ups said they wanted to build a reservoir, the locals would hardly object. Sigh..." Yang Jing didn't want to say more about this. This reminded him of the news he heard when he took Gege to Tiger Leaping Gorge last year. He felt sick just thinking about it.
Seeing that Yang Jing didn't want to say more about this, Old Ivan tactfully changed the subject: "Mr. Yang, now that we have entered the reservoir, the sailing conditions will become very stable. The length of this reservoir is nearly 60 kilometers. Even if we sail at a speed of 18 knots, it will take almost two hours to reach the river mouth. So, if you like, you can take a helicopter to see the scenery here in the sky."
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