A goodwill visit to San Francisco and the Sonoma Coast by a big, handsome Russian sailing ship was suddenly canceled Friday, the result of a complicated legal problem that involves both history and cultural treasures.

It was a baffling morning that left two boatloads of diplomats and members of the Russian and Polish communities sailing around on the bay waiting for a ship that never arrived.

The ship is the 360-foot-long sail training vessel Nadezhda, which was due at the San Francisco sea buoy, outside the Golden Gate, at 9 a.m. A pilot was ready to board the Nadezhda to guide it into the harbor, longshoremen were assigned to tie it up at Pier 27 on the city's waterfront, and nearly 100 people were aboard two boats ready to greetthe ship.

But just after dawn, a message came from the Maritime State University in Russia. The Nadezhda wasn't coming. The captain got orders to avoid any U.S. port and head for Mexico.

Norton Lilly International, the ship's Bay Area agents, were told unspecified "political problems" - a phrase not heard from Russian vessels since the Cold War - was the reason for the change.

Big plans washed out

The switch was sudden. The Russian Consulate in San Francisco, as well as the local Russian and Polish communities, had laid out elaborate plans to entertain the ship's crew, and to organize a visit to Bodega Bay and Fort Ross on the Sonoma Coast, two areas that were colonized by the Russians nearly 200 years ago.

The change even took Russian Consul General Vladimir