Drawn by the romance of thesea, he entered the Faculty of Shipbuilding Odessa Institute of Marine Engineers, in 1954, graduated with honors and worked until 1959, the shop foreman dockyard in the city on the Danube Kiliya. There, he felt a craving for history, for Kiliya located on the ancient route from the Varangians to the Greeks. Being by nature a fire-worshipers, became fascinated by flame technology, resulting in a first book "Operation and maintenance kerosinorezov" (M., "Marine transport", 1958). She was presented instead of the abstract for admission to graduate school CRI Navy in Leningrad. During graduate school he studied until 1962, and in 1964 he de- fended his thesis, which was dedicated to the strength of worn-out vessels and was in fact the beginning of a new scientific direction - the ship's Gerontology. In the future, led the division of the Institute, which developed the laws of the technical operation of the fleet of the USSR. Written and published over 60 articles, several books and pamphlets relating to the scientific work. Greatest repercussions book Maintainability ships "(Leningrad:" Shipbuilding", 1978) because of the novelty and daring critics of official doctrine. Turning year career began in 1986, when the death of a passenger liner Admiral Nakhimov -" young love future shipbuilder. Essay "Clash of the Bay" ("Science and Life", 1988, N12) gave an impetus to the establish- ment of a professional writer.