Beginning of the trip

Beginning of the voyage

And finally that day came (August 21, 2018) to say goodbye to my loved ones and set sail from my berth in the marina. When checking out of the marina, they ask me if I am changing the marina due to dissatisfaction with their services, and I explain to them that I am not changing the marina, but going on a slightly longer sailing, if all goes well. (It is only today that I see that this was not a marina, but in local parlance five piers, where the boats were crammed close together, and far from all the piers the facility was called a toilet with two toilets and four showers).
I sail out of the marina, sit on the boat overlooking the deck and into the cabin as far as I could see from the cockpit, and I say to myself, “Well you see, now this will be your home for quite some time, you have a basement and a beautiful terrace that moves and sways in all directions. ”I look back at the pier. Almost all of mine are there.
I sail past the Plaza Hotel on the right, my favorite islets on the left, where I prepared my own picnics for the warm spring days and hung out with the locals in the summer. Well, now that’s over and I’m heading towards new adventures. I arrive from the bay, the mistral blows very lightly, so I don’t try very hard with the sails and I simply open the SR genaker, which was sewn for me by Rado, and the boat glides on the water towards Cape Kamenjak. I am soon at the gates of Kvarner, on the right is a beautiful lighthouse, where I often went fishing. So many beautiful memories. I sail slowly all day with a light wind and by evening I am already on the Unions, where I drop anchor in front of the small Union village. Here I arranged with Blaž from Luxury Marin for his friends to bring me some Luxury Marine T-shirts and a Skiper sailing jacket by boat, which will come in very handy on cold days and nights. It is 7 pm, the police boat arrives at the anchorage and warns all the boats that are anchored too close to the village, checks their documents and navigation permits, which I do not have and have never had for Croatia. It was especially expensive that year. Well, finally the patrol boat sails away, I take a break and look at the T-shirts and jacket with a smile. Happy and at the same time very tired, I go to bed, because a long day is behind me, full of preparations and full of mental burdens.

The next morning I wake up as usual first in the bay and of course I wake up the neighbors with my loud anchor winch. The anchor is on the boat, there is no wind, the day is beautiful and I continue my way past Lošinj, where the sea is completely calm, there is no wind, the smoke from the cigarette rises vertically. Out of boredom, I check the engine and notice that water is leaking into the boat at the cuff, where the shaft goes out of the boat. Well, the feeling is not pleasant at all, without the boat sinking because of a liter of water, but it rings in my head: “Are you going on a trip with such a boat Walter?” I still continue sailing and talk on the phone with my friend Dušan, who has the same boat. , but a different mode of transfer, but still explains to me what to try to do and mentions to me that it might be better to go back to Bunarina, where I would lift the boat and fix these problems.

To come back, but that’s not it! I continue my way south, sailing all day and trying to eliminate the eccentric rotation of the shaft by adjusting the height of the engine mounts right during the voyage and somehow I succeed. Water no longer leaks into the boat. I wonder how this came about at all, as it never happened until my outer bearing on the shaft was changed at Bunarina. I decide to stop the engine and carefully inspect the axle, flange and transmission. It didn’t take me long to find that the mechanics with the hammer were hitting the aluminum flange to which the shaft was attached and that’s why the shaft dances so eccentrically, with water leaking at the cuff. Glad that I found a mistake, I decide to stop in Montenegro with a friend in the marina Zelenika, where they will be able to help me.
For today, I have enough thinking about my roaring engine, sitting on the bow of a boat, observing the perfectly calm sea and admiring the beautiful romantic sunset. The boat continues to sail in complete windlessness, but I don’t care about the windlessness and I think: there will be enough wind soon, sometimes too much. The time is 22.00 and I am 20 nm in front of Dugi otok. I decide to drop anchor in a small bay where I have stopped several times for a short break. The bay is very easy to enter even in complete darkness, as I know it well from the times when my parents and I anchored in this bay and where I sometimes knew just about every pebble on the beach. At one in the morning, I finally arrive at the bay and drop anchor somewhere in the middle. Unfortunately, I didn’t have much rest that night, as loud Slovenian folk music came to me from the two neighboring boats, which were the least pleasant music in the whole world, and loud singing of drunken people without the slightest singing talent. I stuff the biggest earplugs in my ears and try my best to fall asleep. I wake up at sunrise, drink a cup of coffee, and raise the anchor. The wind will be enough for sailing at least until 12 noon, when everything will calm down again. Mainsail andgenakarjem. Sailing is pleasant, light wind, sea without waves, the boat sails 5 sometimes 5.5 and what more could one want than such a light breeze. I wonder which island I will drop anchor behind, where I will sleep today if there is no wind. Another night on a motorbike with such a crooked flange I will definitely not sail! The wind is constant all day and even at sunset it is no less than at sunrise, so I decide not to anchor today at all, but to take advantage of the favorable wind and continue sailing. Every time I sail past the Kornati, it’s like sailing here for the first time – these beautiful islands take a person’s breath away and wherever you go, it’s hard to find more beautiful islands. At a blood-red sunset, the walls of these magical islands turn into multicolored sculptures rising from the dark blue sea.

I move the route on the GPS to the Split gate and as it shows me, I will be there with such a wind at 6.30 in the morning. I promised my friend Kristjan that I would visit him on Šolta in the small village of Nečujem, where he and a friend run a pleasant bar with a swimming pool. I enjoy the cockpit all night, watching the stars and in the middle of the night a dolphin comes to greet me. At 7.00 I am already in front of Mali Drvenik, where the wind turns to a light bora, so instead of coffee for good morning I sail in an orca through the Split Gate until 11 am, just to reach a point from which I can turn to the bay where it lies without worries. village I don’t hear. I call my friend Bruno, who always provides me with the only pier in this village, so I don’t need anchoring and thus the inflating of a small dinghy is eliminated, which I’m most happy about. I spent five days on this island and waited for the favorable wind to continue my journey. Meanwhile, I was diving around the wreckage of a sunken ship, helping out at the bar and being the only one with a valid car driver’s license to make major beer purchases for the bar. On this island I enjoyed the divine delicacies of the cuisine of Tanja and Ivana. The days passed quickly and the journey had to continue. The day was sunny with a pleasant mistral, so I sailed in an orco again to sail through the Split Gate. Along the way, I was forced out by a smaller cruiser, the Split Dolphin, which made me have to unhook the genoa to slow down the boat, as it was already getting too close. Tourists wave goodbye to me with a smile. Oh, how happy I am! And I wave them back a little differently … The wind is exactly 26 kn in the stern and I sail with a full mainsail and half a genoa. The average speed of the boat is 7.2 and before sunset I drop anchor to the right of the church in a small bay on the island of Vis.

The night is calm, the wind nothing, the waves nothing. Dubrovnik glows on the right, and the stars above me. The sea is completely calm, not like a year ago, when it was in this very place that a furious storm raged that I could barely escape. At sunset I sail into the bay. In this channel, for the first time in my life, I experienced the wind blowing into the stern. Whenever I sailed in any direction, I had the wind in my head. I anchor in front of Herceg Novi and take a break: I managed to cross the entire Croatian sea without control, especially here from Dubrovnik, there were a lot of controls, and I even saved my navigation license. Welcome to the land of great food and brandy! That’s why I don’t procrastinate and sleept I inflate the dinghy, start the engine and head for the shore. First coffee, then beer, then čevapčiči. I walk around the city all day and switch from coffee to coffee and enjoy the sunny weather. Before I move on, I check the weather forecast, which shows nothing special, so I decide to stay anchored in the same place and be able to go to sleep without worry in my golden bed. At 4.20 I wake up on my own as if feeling this storm! I hear thunder and watch the clouds cover the starry sky. In five minutes, the situation changes completely: the wind gauge shows 90 kn, until the bracket breaks off and hangs only on the wires, the boat leans into the water all the way to the fence, as if sailing. Hail is falling, lightning and thunder are everywhere, the effect is similar to a disco, gusts of wind come from two valleys, so these slopes also occur. I follow the GPS how the anchor slides, so I drop the whole chain 65 m into the sea, but the anchor is still sliding. I have no choice but to start the engine and drive in the direction of the wind with the anchor chain just enough to ease the force and prevent the anchor from slipping, and before that, just in case, I put my passport and all the money in my pocket. After 45 minutes, everything calms down, and I’m in the middle of the bay at least 1 mile from where I was anchored. And I smile to myself: in this bay, your anchor has always slipped, and you’re still anchoring here. “Of course,” I say to myself, “the inns are close and the beautiful girls are here, so I will anchor in this bay many more times!”

The sun has risen, I raise the anchor with the whole chain and sail to the marina Zelenika, where I look for my friend Neš, the owner of the marina, who is very happy for me, as well as his workers. A year ago, I was here for so long that I drank coffee with the workers, ate lunch with them, drove their cars, only I wasn’t getting their paycheck yet, as they jokingly remarked. I asked Neša for help as my axle spun like the wheel of a drunk driver. Unfortunately, Nešo can’t help me, as his marina is completely overloaded due to storing the boats due to the winter, and he says that he didn’t even have time to put his boat in the water this year. To make contact with me from his good friend on the other side of the bay in the village of Bjelina, who is already waiting for me with tools. His house stands on the pier, again the only pier in this village, so I’ll be at the center of the action again. I thank Neš and push the boat away from the pier, and he calls out to me: “I have a gift for you, don’t buy oil, stop here when you go across the Adriatic!”
I sail again through this beautiful bay from which high mountains rise. In front of me I look at the mighty mountain Njegoš, on the left lies the Bay of Kotor, and on the right slope I see a huge area of ​​burnt forest and shrubs. Sailing this huge bay in nice weather is wonderful if you subtract all the other factors that are to blame for human negligence. I arrive at the village of Bjelina and tie up at the pier, where Dragan is waiting for me. We drink coffee together and I explain my problem to him. He neither stepped on the boat nor wanted to look under the hood, but said, “Okay, it’s three o’clock today and it’s late, I have to think and we’ll continue tomorrow. But you rest and watch out for the bora on this pier, because these waves will break the boat. If it starts to blow, move to the end of that bay and drop anchor, you’re safe there. ”And that’s exactly how it was: around 9pm it started to blow and the waves were getting unpleasant, so I untied the boat and moved to the end of that the bay where I dropped anchor and slept until morning. In the morning I returned to the pier by boat and met Dragan, who only looked at the shaft and flange and the engine mounts.

We disassembled the shaft, removed the flange from the gearbox and the shaft, repaired one engine mount with a welding machine so that it was like new again. We took the flange to the turner to straighten it, for which he didn’t want any payment, he just smiled at me and said, “If I had come last month before I cleaned the workshop, I would certainly have found a new flange and a new shaft, but it’s all ended up in the trash. ”
Dragan and I quickly return to the boat, as the wind is forecast and the boat is tied to the pier without a running engine, so in the event of a bora wind, it is not possible to move to a safe bay. We quickly assemble the engine, adjust the brackets and set off for a test drive. The shaft rotates almost perfectly, the engine and shaft do not knock and do not cause terrible noise and vibration, and water does not escape into the boat. I pay Dragan 40 euros for his service, which is more than cheap for help, transportation, electricity I needed for my welding machine and a place on the pier. He told me that I could stay on the pier as long as I wanted or until I was dropped off by an unfriendly neighbor who also stole 50 m of anchor rope, so I set sail and returned to the Zelenika marina, where I refilled my oil and water supplies and remained tied to working pier until 13 September. When I want to pay Neša, he just waves his hand and says to me: “Janez for you always! Happy sailing and never with my head through the wall! ”He helps me push the boat away andI leave the marina, which I always have fond memories of, despite the problems I had. The next stop is unknown, I just know it will be on the other side of the Adriatic and it will be for my birthday.