This summer
we had the opportunity of spending nine days on board our friends’ Gianni and
Serena’s yacht off Croatia. When I say
yacht I don’t mean a floating gin palace but a modest 11 metre sailing boat. It’s actually their summer mobile home away
from home, somewhat more attractive to me of course than a caravan.
Gianni who
is from the mountains and also a ski instructor had always told me that as a
mountain lover I would also love yachting.
That may seem paradoxical but it turned out to be quite true. You have in both cases to adapt to a more
modest lifestyle closer to nature. In
the mountains you only have with you what you can carry and you accept with
gratitude the modicum of comfort a mountain hut has to offer ; on a yacht space is at a premium and you have
to simplify your daily habits. In the
mountains there are certain technical procedures you have to master and use as
second nature ; on a yacht too (should I mention here the special pump
action of the on-board toilets). In the
mountains you are in contact with vast open spaces and have to respect the
forces of nature ; on a yacht too.
In the mountains you experience a feeling of awe at the scale and beauty
of nature and a humility before it ; at sea on a small vessel too. In the
mountains working together as a team in this environment gives you a sense of
solidarity, camaraderie and freedom ; on a yacht too.
Gianni and
Serena are both experienced seafarers. Theirs is an original love-story. Both had recently broken up from their first
marriage. Gianni as a hospital doctor had accumulated a vast amount of overtime
he had to take at short notice in November as leave. Serena having extricated herself from the
small business she ran with her former husband wanted some time away. Both being keen sailors and wanting to
realize their dream of crossing the Atlantic on a yacht they signed up for the
same three week trip on which all on board had to participate in navigating the
sailing boat taking it in turn in watches round the clock. Serena was the only
woman on board. That was how they met. If you can survive such an intense close
quarter experience, you’re probably off to a good start for living
together. As land came into sight they
we’re the only ones sad that it was over.
Back home at different ends of Northern Italy it didn’t take long before
Serena moved to Piedmont. Later Gianni stopped working and they bought a small
yacht together to sail away for a year and a half from Italy to Greece and
Turkey. Astridos, their present bigger
boat is their second. Suffice it to say
that living on a boat is second nature to them.
Before
taking up their generous offer to join them on board, there were three main concerns in my mind. What would it be like living in close confinement
with another couple for a week ?
Would I be seasick ? Would I
fry to death being with nowhere to hide from the sun all around and
reverberating off the water ?
Actually none of these fears was founded.
Gianni, Serena,
Clara and myself have been on holiday three times together skiing in the
Dolomites, staying in self-catering accommodation and spending the whole day
outdoors together. So we know we get
along fine, share the daily food related chores without any problem, and have
often sat all four of us together on the same chair-lift. In fact on an 11 metre boat there is plenty
of space with a separate cabin for each couple at opposite ends and anyway in a
Croatian summer you’re outdoors most of the time, so we never felt on top of
each other.
Off the
Croatian coast there are one or two chains of islands. If you sail between these and the mainland
you never actually enter the open Adriatic.
The whole time you are on a calm inner sea. The biggest waves to contend with are when
some moron in a high-powered speed-boat unnecessarily cuts across your
bows. Actually an 11 metre boat is big
and heavy enough to be pretty stable, it doesn’t rock when you walk up and down
it, or do anything else energetic for that matter. So sea-sickness is really
not an issue.
Astridos
has a very comfortable main area below deck in which you can stand up, so it
was possible to retreat inside if necessary during the hottest hours of the
day. Outside she is well equipped with a
big and thick canopy over the steering area so that you can stay out of the sun
there too. I actually pursued a policy
of no sun-cream, just stay in the shade and managed not to get sun-burned at
all, apart from…
The main
and most enjoyable activity for me on a Croatian summer holiday is swimming in
the warm crystal clear water of the sea.
On a boat you don’t have to walk to the beach, you just go over the side
when you feel like it. The first thing I
would do in the morning at 7 or before would be to get out of bed, walk through
the boat and go straight into the water for half an hour or more. Then several times again in the course of the
day, as of when we had anchored or moored somewhere. In fact I was swimming two to three hours a
day every day. Bliss. Soon, as we settled in and became more
relaxed so as not to stand on ceremony, it became clear that swimming costumes
were a waste of time as they only slow down drying off. Moreover, swimming naked is one of life’s
great pleasurable sensations. The only
problem is that some parts of us are not so often exposed and therefore rather
delicate, so I did get fairly sun-burned on my bum.
Serena and
Gianni keep their boat in Monfalcone which is at the northermost point of the
Adriatic (indeed of the Mediterranean for that matter) . From there they sail South along the
Croatian coast for two months every summer, until such time in the future when
for family reasons they may be freer to take longer and go further. To get the boat there to begin with they also
had to sail it all the way round Italy from Liguria. Of all the places they have sailed they
reckon Croatia is the best. The coast is
really beautiful, there are countless islands, hidden inlets and bays, and
plenty of protection from the open sea if needed. It’s one big playground for yachtsman and in
the season there’s plenty of them, including quite a few inexperiended ones on
charter boats. Therefore, they prefer to go in June and July and be back for
August when it’s too hot and too busy and they can return to the cool and peace
of their home in the Alps. Sounds like a
good plan to me.
This means
that when we joined them early in July they were already on their way back
up. I mention this because the
predominant winds in the Adriatic blow down from the North. This was all too well known to the great
maritime republic of Venice, the Serenissima, which could deploy its naval
forces southwards quickly. However, coming back home means the wind is
predominantly against you. So although
we hoisted the sails whenever we could on Astridos, most of the time we made a
stately progress under power. So I can’t
claim we were actually ‘sailing’ most of the time, but when we were it was
something else. There is something truly
magnificent about being under sail, the sudden silence where the engine noise is
replaced by the whoosh and creaking of being driven along by the force of
nature. Perfectly on cue, the very first time we hoisted sail, we saw our first
dolphins leaping out of the water in the middle distance, it seemed somehow
appropriate.
So there
wasn’t really enough opportunity to become expert in the finer points of sail
management but I was happy to pull on a rope or feed one out when told to. On the other hand I did take my hand at
steering quite a bit, even if Astridos has a modern auto-pilot. In fact she is superbly equipped with
electronic gadgetry displaying at an easy glance, the compass bearing, wind
speed, actual speed of the boat and depth of water under the boat (which can
vary quite alarmingly off some islands) , plus of course GPS to show you
exactly where you are and how you’ve been zigzagging. Steering under sail was
the most fun, seeing how much speed you could get up, actually faster than with
the engine, by steering more or less into the wind. It would be easy to get
interested in the techinical skills and arts of sailing and navigating and I
admire those who have mastered them. I
think I admire especially the ability to manœuvre at close quarters, which
would certainly have me worried about banging into something and doing
irreperable damage. Needless to say the
skilled sailors took over from the novices as soon as things got tricky !
Perhaps I
should briefly describe our itinerary, though ultimately it is of secondary
importance. We joined Astridos at a
marina in Murter from where we sailed to a fine bay on the island of Zirje and
discovered how for the night you can tie up at a specially installed buoy and
part with your rubbish to the man who comes in a boat to collect your not
exactly modest parking fee. Our next
overnight was for free in a small fjord like estuary south of the more famous
Krka one. From there it was too Prvic
Luka off a small port on a typical small Croatian island with neat old villages
linked by an attractive path through Mediterranean vegetation.
The
highlight for me though was always going to be sailing through the National
Park of the Kornati islands, a large arhicpelago of barren round islands with
stone walls and grazing sheep, somehow strangely reminiscent of Yorkshire. This was the way to visit them, leisurely on
our peaceful boat with an overnight stay at the park’s marina, instead of being
packed onto a day outing boat from one of the ports on the mainland. Next came the wonderful Telascica Bay with
its famous cliffs, every bit as good as their reputation. Logistics compelled us to spend a night back
in civilization at the noisy port of Sali.
Here we decided to stay on an extra two days allowing us to overnight at
Mala Rava, one of Gianni and Serena’s favourite spots, and very pretty it was
too with the usual excellent swimming.
From there it was to Brgulje from where we could get an early morning
ferry to Zadar and a taxi back to our starting point, leaving our friends to
continue sedately northwards back to Monfalcone.
As a new
experience I found it all quite enthralling and quite in keeping with my
temperament. The mountaineer in me found
he relished the similar experience of sailing and the holiday-maker was more
than happy to adapt to the slower pace, with time for enjoying the simpler
pleasures of life and contemplating the beauty of the surroundings. All of this of course is wonderful to share
with friends.
