How do they sail into Russia? They would need their own AIS transponder and a valid ship registration, the Greek/Turkish maritime zone and the Black Sea has a tone of coast guard and military activity and you need to Lee-register/declare traversal.
Going into Russia through the northern sea doesn’t seem to be viable either.
In a past life I used to take (smaller) boats from Miami into the Bahamas and back. Everyone always warned me that the US coast guard would stop any boat entering US waters but I couldn’t tell you a single time it happened.
Grant it I wasn’t traveling on multi million dollar yachts, but sometimes what you expect to happen and what actually happens are two different things when it comes to enforcing laws.
The Dardanelles are the narrowest straights you can’t just pass them, you need to book passage and you cant just sail into the Sea of Marmara with your AIS turned off, in fact you can’t enter Turkish waters with it turned off and you will get boarded.
The US has a much larger coast line and even then you usually have to communicate with someone if you don’t want to get a visit from the coast guard.
Also I haven’t seen a single luxury yacht you can rent without a crew, this isn’t any different than chartering a private jet you get a pilot, co-pilot and a flight attendant as part of the package. A yacht isn’t a small boat you need a proper captain, an engineer and a service crew.
A boat that can sail form anywhere in the med to Russia needs to be quite big and have quite a bit of fuel and supplies.
This doesn’t seem to be an operation that can be executed so simply you need to make sure there is enough fuel/supplies which may raise flags on shore when you book it, you need to find a way to deal with the crew, you need to be able to replace the AIS and have a valid ship registration to pass through the Dardanelles into the Black Sea.
While I’m sure an organized crime cartel might be able to pull this off but the resources and planning this job would require would be quite insane.
Try doing that in the Aegean not to mention the Sea of Marmara / Dardanelles and lets see how that works out.
They might be able to sail into North Africa and then arrange for fake papers and ownership transfer but I would really like to know how they would sail into Russia without raising any alarms.
The Russian coast of the Black Sea can only be accessed by passing through Turkish waters. And the other Russian coasts are relatively far away, challenging, and dangerous to sail to in a pleasure yacht.
To get through to Russia they need to pass territorial waters, you ain’t getting into the Black Sea or through the Aegean really with your AIS turned off.
Now it’s even harder due to the migrant crisis the waters are very heavily patrolled and anything bigger than a dingy will light up on radar.
Going into Russia through the northern sea doesn’t seem to be viable either.