Ahoy!
This time the cat and the bear are on a sailing adventure! Both of us had never done this before. We’re so lucky that one of our friends knows how to sail and that he proposed to go sailing for our summer holiday :). So, in the end, the crew consisted of 5 members: the cat, the bear, a Siamese cat *ehem, because she’s Thai ;)*, Capt. polar bear, and another polar bear :p. Here you go, the crew seen from the top of the mast by the cat and the bear…
We started traveling by car from Italy towards Croatia, to Murter to be exact. There, in the harbor, the boat had been waiting for us. The boat is a Bavaria Cruiser 40 S, named ‘Judita’, more details can be found here. It’s actually quite big, there are 3 bedrooms inside, besides a living room and a kitchenette. The living room inside was almost never used, because we always eat breakfast, lunch, dinner, and after-dinner-drink outside near the cockpit *there are two benches and a fold-able table*, accompanied by summer breeze ^^.
The trip was going like this…
Starting from the harbor in Otok Murter *otok means island*, we went a bit south of the island with the motor to find a bay to spend a night. The next day, we went towards Otok Kakan, still used the motor, and found a nice bay there that we stayed for two nights. Then, since the wind condition was so good, we finally sailed to Kornati National Park! We found a bay to spend the night around Otok Kornat, which is the best place out of all the bays we’ve stayed at during the trip.
The next day, the wind condition was even better than before, so we sailed again towards Dugi Otok. The first night there we stayed at a bay that was very crowded because it’s a touristic area: there is a salt lake where we can float around since the salinity is even higher than in the sea ^^, and a line of cliffs which is pretty impressive. At the second night we stayed at a more quite bay, with only few boats around. The morning there was… amazing, so peaceful and serene, I love it!
The last night was well spent at the harbor in Otok Murter, because some of us, including me and the bear, had to leave early morning to drive back to Italy. We had the last supper in a local restaurant, where I got to eat tasty calamaris :). Finally, a meal time without us having to prepare the meals and clean the dishes afterwards :D.
The trip was basically like camping…
- We took turns preparing the meals and cleaning the dishes. Cleaning the dishes can sometimes turn into swimming activity, catching fallen items in the sea :p. I really enjoy the trip, but… to be honest, this activity of cleaning the dishes every time we had a meal was really tiring, and we had full meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner) everyday. I wish next time we go on a sailing trip, we could hire someone to clean the dishes for us :D.
- We couldn’t waste fresh water during the whole week, because we could only refill the fresh water in the harbor. So… shower is very limited ^^; Well, we were swimming everyday anyway. But after 3 days, I gave up, I couldn’t go on without shampooing my hair. During the whole week I didn’t shower, but washed my hair with shampoo twice. When we arrived in the harbor again at the last afternoon of the trip, I spent half an hour showering :D.
- The nighttime is the time I enjoyed a lot. Sipping a drink while looking at the beautiful night sky… and falling stars, unforgettable!
About mooring, anchoring, and sailing…
At some bays, there are some mooring buoys provided, which can be used to fix the boat in a place just by passing a rope through the buoy. This is a quite easy maneuver, so the driver needs to steer the boat slowly approaching the buoy, then a guy should be ready to pull the buoy with a stick and another guy to pass the rope through the buoy.
But at some bays where there is no buoy, we need to do anchoring, releasing the boat’s anchor, and this is a difficult maneuver. At our first night, we tried to do anchoring for three times before we could finally make it. And the routine is quite time consuming. First, we need to locate where to put the anchor, preferably sandy ground. Then we release the anchor, until a certain length. Next the driver will try to speed up the boat a bit to check whether the anchor holds or not, if not there should be a certain movement of the chain, like hopping. Last step, to be sure, someone should dive and check whether the anchor holds or not.
Proper mooring and anchoring are important so that we could sleep peacefully at night in the boat :).
Sailing, for me, is like playing with ropes :D. There are a looot of ropes to be pulled and to be released, for each maneuver, like unrolling the sails or turning the sails. In the end of sailing, there will be many ropes to be tidied up -.-. The driving is actually quite fun too, since we have to find a perfect angle against the wind to gain speed. We sailed three times during the trip. The wind at the last sailing was really week that we could only go at most 2.6 knot (4.8 km/hour), while during the previous two it can reach 6 knot (11 km/hour).
Some interesting stories I would like to tell…
- At my first morning waking up in the boat, I went up, and spotted a naked butt roaming around in the neighboring boat. I was like… wow, I mean, I just woke up! 😀 After some days, I could finally get used to seeing naked sailors, butts and boobs, well most of the daring people are already quite old. But once there was this quite young couple. I spotted the young man sitting naked on a chair with binoculars <– this is a typical example of ambiguous sentences that is often used in syntax and semantic classes. In my case, both meaning are true, and when we caught each other’s binoculars I was like… ups :p.
- At our second night in Otok Kakan, which is the third night of the trip, there was a storm. At first we watched an amazing view of lightnings from far away while drinking, but then the storm moved to us. Some of us needed to stay awake to guard, just in case something bad happens. Me? Was peacefully sleeping despite of rough movements of the boat :D.
To complete the stories, I present you… some pictures from the trip *again, thanks to slide.ly*. However, unfortunately there’s no pictures of naked sailors :p.
See you on the next adventure! 😉