10. New friends, 1000 mile celebrations and wall building

8th September 2008
We celebrated our first 1000 miles of sailing in Croatia this week by eating a wonderful meal of local oysters and lobster salad. We watched as our lunch was fished out of holding nets live, in the sea in front of the restaurant. It was recommended by both Eddy (see later) and the same book that recommended Vego’s fish and chip restaurant in Primosten. We are in Loviste and the restaurant owner, Gordan, extended us an invitation to join him at a festival in his town in the mountains that “we must witness”!

When we were sailing with him, Vego told us a little story. “When God made the Earth he made England for the English, France for the French and Germany for the Germans. And when he had finished he was pleased. But then the Croatians said “hey, what about us?” and God said “Damn! I forgot you. Well, I have a piece of land that I was saving for myself but I guess I better give some of it to you.”

So far we have only really seen the coast – and it certainly seems like God’s country. While we were storm bound on Vis (see below) we decided it was time to explore the interior on a hired scooter and see if it was God’s country inland too. We bought a road map showing Vis’s eight roads and off we went. We had a very exciting ride. The one “main road” around the island WAS tarmaced but little used as we saw perhaps four cars on our whole journey. The “local roads”, which criss-crossed the mountains and down to the coast, varied from bumpy tracks to dirt roads. We needed a trials bike, not a scooter but we persevered!

From talking to people we meet, it seems that many families own a small piece of land on which to grow enough grapes and olives for their own use, a little fishing boat from which the man of the house fishes each morning and a house that is improved/built as and when they can afford to buy the materials. Land is handed down generation to generation. The Croatians are always busy, a very industrious nation. Vis is covered with small plots of land divided up by the ever present dry stone walls. These walls are amazing – we have seen literally 100’s of miles of them. The other evening we went to a village festival and watched two little boys of about 3 years old each making their own stone walls. Stones were in short supply and they were stealing from each other as a source. When the one being stolen from realised he started to defend his wall. It was priceless – they almost came to blows over it and tears were shed. It was as if the lads had wall building in their blood!

Many of the plots are over-grown and untended on other islands and on the coast but on the interior of Vis they were well tended. Apparently Vis wine is the best in Croatia and arguably in Europe and allegedly gives the French cause for concern. Most plots had vineyards planted and the smell of ripe grapes filled the air. Wonderful.

4th September 2008 – Crazy Sail
We have just anchored after a crazy sail in a 0 – 30 knot wind. Yes I do mean zero to thirty! It all started at 6.30 this morning when we woke because the boat felt different. We were anchored on a very steeply banking and rocky shore (ie we were very close to land and had a shore line) in U Stoncica on Vis. The water was over 15m at our bow, 5m where we sat and really not sure how deep and where the anchor was. Andy had had to dive using a boat hook to get the extra depth to retrieve a bath towel that had blown off our washing line into the water just off our port side last night and his ears hurt when he came up!

Anyway the reason the boat felt different was because the wind had suddenly got up and was blowing us onto the shore. We decided to up anchor and motor round to Vis town where we hoped to go ashore and shop but also meet up with a British couple, Fi and Eddy on their Oyster 55 (VERY nice boat), Kantara. The sun was just rising and the wind was strong SE. About 25 knots and the sea was choppy. We anchored in U Kut just off a large church and had breakfast.
All was good when we left Deep Blue and took the tender over to Kantara. Ed and Fi have spent the past 11 years on board several months every year. They keep Kantara in Dubrovnic when not on board. By co-incidence my friend Karen knows their son who is a doctor and had worked for a short while in the hospice where she is a nurse! After coffee, swapping tales and recommendations we left to go shopping. Suddenly I realised Deep Blue was missing! Where was she? Then we saw her mid channel, being blown downwind towards a large cemetery on an island (a fitting place we thought later). Eddy had also spotted her and we both raced to her. She must have been at the limit of her anchor by now as the water is incredibly deep all around Vis Island except for close to the shore! When we checked, she was in over 18 metres of water and we “only” had 24 metres of chain out as we had anchored in 8 metres! We were so relieved we had spotted her before it was too late. She was probably 5-10 minutes from disaster. Once safely on board, it was engine on, abandon the shopping, anchor up (covered in seaweed) and sails up to leave.

Thus started a very exciting sail, mainly dead down wind. We were only going 12 miles to hopefully a safer anchorage on the other side of the island but the wind is so strange here that we had to be on our toes all the time. When we first left we were sailing with one reef in both sails at 8.4 knots! This is the fastest we have ever sailed Deep Blue, even fully canvassed. About half way round we suddenly found ourselves in the doldrums while all around us the sea had white horses. We were very unsure which side the wind would blow next, but blow it was going to do. We had to gibe, then the wind was in front of us and we had to bear away. We decided this was a good time to put in a second reef in the main (genoa was already 2 reefs). Eventually after over 5 mins of tender hooks we found the wind – 25 knots from a completely different direction – then another lull and back to 25 knots from the SW and back to 7 + knots through the water.
We are now safely anchored inside the breakwater at Komiza on the West side of Vis though again we had a dragging anchor before it held fast – it is very hard to get a good hold here. It is so beautiful here, mountainous and very fertile. Vis is an interesting island. It was Tito’s stronghold during the cold war with Russia as an ally so became a target of the USA. Apparently there is a labyrinth of underground bunkers with a nuclear arsenal that can hold over 500 people and was the nerve centre in the event of a tit-for-tat nuclear war. Eddy has seen it and says it is full of computers and is amazing – very James Bond.

5th September 2008 – Pointless sailing (actually there is never a pointless sail – just lots of lessons learnt)
The wind kept up all night and we had a disturbed sleep. We had to leave but first a proper explore, a walk up to the deceptively sized (very impressive looking from the sea) church on the mountainside; a coffee and a shop for food. We decided we would try out our storm sail as the wind was still 30+ knots and the sea rough. We took some time working out how to rig the sail and which sheets to use, don lifejackets, put two reefs into our main and we were off.
Komiza is on the West coast of the island of Vis in a large bay over 4 kms wide. We were making for the West of Hvar 17 nm NE of us. Eddy had told us we must see the South of Vis so we decided we should go round the Island anti-clockwise. Mistake number 1! As we left Komiza heading SW we were going 7.4 knots but when we rounded the SW tip we found that we could only sail at 70 degrees to the apparent wind and even then we slowed down to under 3 knots so just couldn’t sail close enough to the wind to follow the East bearing we needed (45 degrees to true wind). Our tacking angle became 140 degrees (normally 100). To top this, we couldn’t see the coast anyway due to the spray! After an hour of going nowhere we made the very sensible decision to turn round and sail clockwise!
All was well until we rounded the NW point of Vis at 7 knots. We then found we could not make Hvar for the same reason as before – the sail angle compounded with the apparent wind – and we still had 13 miles to go as the crow flies. At 3 knots this was going to take us until after dark! Vis town was less than 3 miles away and by now the visibility was down to 2 miles. We decided to make for Vis. So instead of punching the swell and wind as it now gets dark, Andy is cooking dinner and we are safely stern-to on Vis town quay.
Funnily enough the bay is full of British flags – including two 55 foot Oysters, one who said “bet you had a lively sail, I had a look and came back”. The other was Eddy and Fi who hollered at us as we passed “we were worried about you” and told us that their anchor had also slipped just after ours yesterday and their boat was rescued by Jacques Villeneuve (F1 formula driver) who was on his rather smart motor yacht flying a Ferrari flag! Made us feel a bit better that even they – who had been live-aboard for 11 years – should also slip, and they needed rescuing!!!
So many lessons learnt today.