Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
It's been another amazing few weeks with some great sailing and beautiful bays. We'd intended to spend about 6 weeks in Croatia but here we are almost 2 months in and still heading north! We had some fun in the Prukljansko lake, sailing under bridges and through winding channels while the less bold chugged along on engine. We took a trip to the Krka waterfalls while we were there but wimped out of swimming after reading a sign that proudly listed a number of poisonous aquatic snakes that call the area home. Considering it's late July, we're still managing to find quiet anchorages (there are so many to choose from!) but you can tell summer has arrived because it is HOT! Crazy, can't really function hot. Fortunately we don't have that much to do :)
My big news since the last blog entry is that I finally left my twenties behind me and celebrated/commiserated hitting the big 3-0. To soften the blow, my lovely husband took me for an amazing pre-birthday dinner at a restaurant in Sibenik (Pelegrini) where we stuffed ourselves with food and wine of a standard we've not enjoyed in quite some time. Continuing the food fest, he also snuck out and arranged not just a special birthday breakfast but also an enormous chocolate cake! Thankfully we had more guests (Dinners and Nick) arriving later that day and we were able to pressure them into helping us out, in the end making a pretty respectable dent in it.
Having Dinnewell and Nick to stay was enormously enjoyable for us but after the drama of their first night, they were possibly wondering what they'd gotten themselves into... We'd set off a little later than expected having successfully retrieved a lost wallet but still made it to our anchorage in time for a swim, some birthday bubbles and the Dutch game (our route has been very much driven by the football of late...). We'd had quite strong southerly winds all day so had picked our overnight spot on that basis - little did we know that there was a storm a-coming! At about 5.30am, Gerard and I both awoke to the rumblings of thunder, quickly followed by our boat swinging a full 180 degrees, crazy wind, hammering rain and a sound distinctly like that of an anchor dragging along the ground. We were in our wet weather gear and on deck in about 10 seconds flat and started to pull in the anchor. This is quite a noisy process so unsurprisingly Dinners and Nick also woke up at this point. I like to visualise what ensued from their perspective - they emerged from their room to a scene straight out of the film "Perfect Storm" with Gerard at the wheel battling to steer us towards a mooring buoy (while calling down to them to get their life jackets on), and me on deck already soaked through and holding on for dear life while we bounced over metre-high waves. Fortunately we were secure in no time and about 10 minutes later the storm passed and it turned out to be a glorious day. We had an awesome sail across to the Kornati Islands national park where we managed to relax again with some swimming and competitive diving.
Aside from having visitors, we've had a variety of minor traumas and triumphs over the past few weeks. We finally got our laundry done (major triumph), Gerard got some windsurfing in, we are on the verge of throwing our pilot book overboard (too many times "sand, good holding" has turned out to be solid anchor-unfriendly rock), we broke and then fixed both our outboard engine and voltage regulator (the latter is never to be mentioned again for the sake of our marriage), our fishing line snapped and took with it our shiny new lure on its very first outing (we figure we must have caught a white shark), we had a harrowing moment seeing a boat ground itself on a clearly marked reef but fortunately managing to warn a second one about to do the exact same thing. We also finally lost patience with our anchor winch (which was still playing up and becoming more of a problem) so we're now the proud owners of a brand new one - huge improvement. And we spent a lovely day in Zadar which has a very cute old town and totally won us over with the sea organ.
That's about it, soon we'll be heading south again, expecting to be in Montenegro in mid-August!
- comments
Mumsy Ah have to have a few mishaps!! Montenegro is lovely too xx
Becca Pink Oh my goodness, so glad we were not there in the storm ... I think that would have scarred me for the rest of our trip :O) Broken fishing line - uh oh ... Ben would have been most upset
Grandma Really good to marred your blogs again