On 27 September 1994 ESTONIA was lying at her berth in Tallinn with open visor and open bow ramp, whilst the crew was carrying out some maintenance work and was preparing her for the take-over of passengers, cars, trucks, and trailers in the late afternoon.
While a number of deckhands were clearing up and cleaning the car deck, provisions and stores were taken over and brought down to the provision area on the 1st deck by means of the big lift at the aft end of the centre casing. At the same time one AB was painting the port anchor from a cherry picker standing on the open bow ramp. Even in summer the port anchor with pocket had to be painted quite often as the anchor was frequently used during berthing manoeuvres at Tallinn when Captain Arvo Andresson was in charge, who was still unable to manoeuvre the big vessel the way his colleagues in Finland and Sweden had done during the past 14 years without problems.
Other AB's were painting in the forepart of the car deck near the control panel for visor and bow ramp and the upper flaps of the bow ramp.
At noon two representatives from the Swedish Sjöfartsverket, chief inspectors Åke Sjöblom and Gunnar Zahlée, came on board together with a group of nine high ranking officials in Estonian Ship Safety, who were to be trained in Port State Control matters. ESTONIA was selected to be the test vessel for this day (see details in the following Chapter 15). Captain Andresson was said to be ashore, thus the chief mate Juhan Herma and the chief engineer Lembit Leiger were in charge of the ferry.
Most of the passengers who returned with the ferry to Stockholm the same evening were ashore on sightseeing tours whilst others attended on board seminars and did not go ashore at all. Among them was a group of Statoil Sweden employees and a group of 68 police civil servants belonging to the ST section of the Stockholm police. The seniors of this group had cabins on the outer and inner side of deck 6 while others were staying in cabins of the 5th and 4th decks.
Two members of another group, Rolf Sörman and Nebosja Grkovic - see Enclosure 21.3.3.335.1 and Enclosure 21.3.4.348 - had returned from shore early and were having their lunch in the restaurant "Poseidon" in the aft part of deck 6. They observed six or seven persons at the big table in the centre, one of whom was the master of the second crew, Captain Avo Piht. Another one was an officer wearing a blue uniform. Furthermore there were two ladies and two gentlemen in civil clothes probably the two Stockholm pilots with their ladies. There was a friendly atmosphere. A walky-talky was standing upright on the table and was obviously turned on channel 16 because they heard a gale warning in English.
Among the new passengers coming on board in the course of the afternoon was the weapons dealer Alexander Vorodin, his father-in-law Vasili Krjutjkov, and his cousin Vassili Vorodin, who received either cabin 6320 or 6230. This is of some importance because later, during the diving survey in December 1994, the suitcase of Alexander Vorodin was taken out of cabin 6230 by a diver. It was the second cabin on the port side in front of deck 6 which however - according to the survivor purser Andres Vihmar - had been assigned to Captain Avo Piht. - See Andres Vihmar's statement attached as Enclosure 14.195 . On the other hand, Vasili Krjutjkov did testify in his first statement - Enclosure 14.196 that their cabin had been 6230 and only in his subsequent statement - Enclosure 14.197 - said, it had been 6320 while his nephew Vassili Vorodin stated that they had looked out of the window after the abrupt starboard heel. This would not have been possible from cabin 6320 which was an inside cabin without windows. Thus it has to be assumed that the Vorodins were in cabin 6230.
Also the Swedish press photographer Håkan Isefjord came on board with his camera equipment, of which he should later hide one camera with 2 films in lifeboat no. 9 which was the last lifeboat on the starboard side of ESTONIA. When the lifeboat was found several days after the casualty on the Estonian north coast the camera, with two films, was found jammed inside the lifeboat and subsequently delivered to the Swedish Embassy in Tallinn from where it was sent by diplomatic mail to Stockholm. According to the files of the public prosecutor the films, however, were not in the camera anymore.
Another passenger was the auditor Peeter Riit who reportedly came on board rather late since he had missed the last plane to Stockholm and therefore took the ferry. Peeter Riit was employed by the Stockholm auditors KPMG who had been instructed by N&T to examine the books of Estline, Tallinn. Reportedly Peeter Riit had completed this job on 27 September 1994 and was now on his way back to Stockholm with a number of, for ESCO, rather damaging documents.
Among the passengers were also a considerable number of businessmen, such as Per-Erik Ehrnsten, Carl Övberg and Tony Spuhl, who had made many previous voyages on board the ferry and thus knew the vessel and crew quite well, which also goes for many truck drivers who came up to the Reception Desk after having driven their trucks on to the car deck and were shown to cabins on the 4th deck reserved for truck drivers only. Most of them sensed a certain state of nervousness with the crew members they met which they had never done before on the many earlier voyages.
The reason for this certain nervousness of some of the crew members could have been the attempt of the Swedish Safety Inspector Åke Sjöblom to stop the ferry from departing which was certainly realised by some crew members and then quickly spread around.
