Easter sailing 2011 in Kvaernum bay, Croatia

 I arrived late in the dark and the temperature was only 7C in the air. The boat had undergone rather extensive repair of some beams supporting the keel and when I was down i February, it was really dusty and dirty inside. So I'd asked for a total cleaning of both the interior and the exterior. On top of that I had ordered to sew up a new sprayhood, bimini and sail cover and put the boat into the sea. It was a great sight seeing the boat again, it looked really smashing!

But there was no power on the bridge so I couldn't use my electric fan. It was freezing cold to sleep on the boat. I had all my clothes on plus three duvet covers on top of me, and I was still freezing. Well finally I managed to sleep and woke up rather warm in 20C+ the morning after.

The plan was to install the navigator in a new stainless steel fram in the cockpit where it should have been placed originally. I have difficulties to understand the Mediteranian tradition of installing the navigator down in the saloon as it was in my boat. It's when you are sailing you need the electronic sea charts at hand. I've also invested in an AIS transponder, from the Swedish make Trueheading. This device have two purposes: 1) It collects positions, heading courses and other information from nearby ( in a range of 20 nautic miles) other boats and present these boats nicely on the electronic sea chart. So even if it gets foggy, I'm able to follow the tracks of other boats in order to avoid collision. It's compulsary for commercial ship above a certain tonnage to have an AIS transponder onboard. 2) It also transmitts my boat's position and course to other boats. So everybody is seeing everybody even if they dont see them...Anyhow after 4 days I got the navigator and the AIS working, but somehow it affected almost all of the other instruments in a bad way. Only some of them worked properly. So there's some work left when I come down next time.

Sally arrived late on the Thursday prior to Easter and we sailed away rather late on the Friday, heading for a little harbour town named Malinska. The shipyard owner, Arsen, had recommended a 3-4 days sailing route and Malinska was one of the suggested stops. I thought it was rather fun and exiting visiting Malinska since my oldest daughter Malin had that nickname as a baby. We arrived after a few hours motor trip on a flat sea just before dusk at a bridge with a lot of mooring possibilities. It was obviously early in the tourist season as there were no harbour authorities around! Bingo! We used the mooring fee on food instead and ordered a plate of mixed fish at one of the seaside restaurants.

The morning after we set sail for Cres, on island Cres! And now we could test the sails, but after a few hours the wind dropped and we went in to the city harbour on motor again. As we had been a bit dissapointed by Malinska for its lack of old charm we were now over the top enthusiastic for the beautiful seafront the medevial town Cres has! After a nice walk along the key, an espresso and a cup of tea, we had a wonderful evening with grilled squid, hake and a bottle of white wine.  We got a table just 5 m from the water at the inner harbour.

We had a long nice sleep on the boat, this night it wasn't so cold anymore, and were brutally woken up on Easter Day morning by the bells of the nearby church. Being not too Christian, we almost converted to Catholism by the enchanting bells! Well, perhaps a slight exageration, but it was really beautiful!

After a long walk in the town we sailed away just across the bay to the tiny harbour town Valun which lies on a rather steep hillside. The Valun bridge was empty of boats and we were a bit concerned about the water depth. Sally were standing in the front of the boat looking for big stones and rocks to avoid. Since the boat just had been repaired from a keel damage we were a bit extra careful not to jepardize the boat. So it was a great relief to see the harbour captain in his lightblue shirt and trousers stepping out on the bridge wawing with his arms to direct us to lie alongside the bridge. A bit strange as they normally want the boats to moor with the stern towards the bridge. But the easier for us. They probably didn't expect that many boats so early in the season. We both jumped off and started to fix the mooring ropes to the bridge. While I was doing that, the captain approched me with a question: "Cola?". "Eh...no thanks", I responded. (may I do the mooring first??) "Coffee?" This captain was persistant, I must say. "Ok, a coffee then please" So the captain went off and came back with a cup of coffee. "10 Kunas" (1,5€). Sure, I gave him the money and reached my hand for the cup of coffee. But he swiftly turned around with "my cup of coffee" and the 10 Kunas and sat down some 10m away at a Café table to enjoy my coffee...I was stunned. And slowly I realised that this guy, who I had really trusted to guide my recently repaired boat to a safe mooring, wasn't at all the harbour captain. He just wanted to get some money for his mooring directives.
 





I had heard wrong. He didn't say "Cola?", he sail "Kuna?" Just a few minutes later we observd him from anothe coffee table that this guy had his normal stance next to a phone booth some 25m away. Suddenly he unbuttoned his trousers and pulled them down, he turned left, he turned right looking for his bottom, and then he pulled up his trousers again. I had practically layed my boat with its sensitive keel in the hand of a local yokel...I relised we had to re-moor the boat again, this time correctly with the stern at the bridge.

We were up rather early the morning after, since we had decided to visit the remote mountain town Lubenice, which lies 378 m over the sea level. We had to follow a marked path up the hillside. After walking one and a half hour in the almost totally silent unhabited woods we were suddenly approaching a very noisy place. It sounded like thousands of parrots in a bush. Could this be true, are there wild parrots in Croatia? Or what sound was it. Almost a bit scary. Well, finally we dared to sneak behind the bushes to

find out what it was. We just discovered a shallow pond below the bushes. No birds! But still a lot of  loud sounds. But as soon as we moved it got silent. Now we realised that the sounds came from hundreds, if  not thousands, of mating frogs! The pond was just full of them.

Lubenice was now just a quarter of an hour's walk away. We got well rewarded for our efforts! The view over the Adriatic from there was just overwhelming.The sky was blue, full sun and clear air. It felt like we could see the whole north of Adriatic. One guy told us that if the air was really crisp clear, as it is in the autumn some times, you could spot the coast of Italy. We were also informed that one of the coves 378m below was voted as one of the ten most beautiful beaches in Europe in some magazine.

 When we were walking among the old houses in the town, we were suddenly stopped by a woman crying "Germans" after us! "Eh...not really, we are from Sweden and Great Brittan" The woman was definetly 80+, had no teeth, and were dressed traditionally in all black. Although we didn't understand a word, more than "Germans", of what she was saying, we realised she wanted to sell us a bottle of water. Hmm, the bottle looked like it was recently  filled with tap water. Ok, we are polite and the woman looked really poor. "Ok, here's 10 Kunas (1,5€), please keep the change". "Nonono" the woman responded. What did she mean? Was it another price? 10 Kunas are way over the market price. We signed to her that she perhaps could write down the price on a pice of paper? She did. 60 Kunas (9€) was the price...OMG, but no, we are certainly not paying 9€ for a second hand bottle of tap water. We left her with the bottle and the 10 Kunas. Later on Branko, one of the shipyard guys told us that the water she was trying to sell us probably was considered to be sacred or blessed. Well,  as I said before, we're not really Christians....

On the way back we took another look in the pond orgy before we started the descend.







It was a quite long sailing trip home and the weather got a bit worse. We experienced rather strong winds/ gusts and even some rain before we reached Bakar again in the darkness around 10 pm. It was not that easy to find the little float bridge, we only had a weak torch to our help. But we managed and went immediately to bed and slept well although it was a very windy night. The sailing vacation was over for this time.