Friday, July 31, 2015
Clouds covered the sunrise, the first time it was this dark all trip. I felt some rain drizzle down, but nothing more.
The wind was eight knots by our anchorage in the bay. Nice! This bodes for great sailing weather! Barely five minutes after putting our sails up did the wind pick up to eighteen, soon stabilizing at twenty-two.
"This is great!" Terry was like a kid on Christmas. He lives for these sailing days.
"Ems, want the helm?"
Might as well. I took the wheel. I've never steered under sail with this much power. There have been a couple times on the J24 when the winds were sustained close to twenty knots, but that was a smaller boat with smaller sails.
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a bit worried. I looked at the panel. Sustained winds at twenty-two, going up to twenty-five. Once I saw the wind speed reach thirty! My top speed on a beam reach was 4.8 knots, which meant we were flying as fast as the boat would be under motor.
"Terry, I think we need to bring in the sails."
"You're good!" He loved when the boat heeled a lot.
"Terry, I'm getting overpowered." A strong gust pushed the boat upwind, and I started to lose control of the wheel as the wind took over.
Terry grabbed the winch handle and started pulling in the headsail and mainsail. In high wind, if you have too much sail up, the wind pushes the boat with more force than the rudder can handle, and thus gets overpowered. Our speed slowed down a bit once the sails were brought in a bit, but I felt much more in control of the boat. Today was all about team effort, since we didn't want to put the autopilot on. If the boat for overpowered, the autopilot was worthless.
We looked around at other sailboats with their sails completely down, motoring along. No one was as brave as us. The weak would call us crazy. We laugh. We're adventurous. We're sailors.
We were sailing with about half a headsail and half the mainsail, and still moving about three knots. That is crazy. We even passed a sailboat motoring with no sail.
The waves were rough. Don't get me wrong, it was fun, but the seas were roaring. Watching the nearby boats go way up and way down in the water was impressive.
As we sailed around, the wind slowly started to die down, sustaining winds barely at twenty knots and rarely with gusts above that, and within a half hour the wind was down to twelve knots.
"What happened?"
Well, it was fun while it lasted. The dinghy filled with water from getting tossed around, so Terry had to go in with a bucket to remove the water that collected inside.
All the Yacht Week boats were coming back inland. I must have seen twenty boats come back in as we were leaving the channel. They all had a blue banner with "The Yacht Week" posted on the backstay, with nationality flags of the customers flying on the boat as well.
Our lunch was leftover pasta with pesto sauce, the rest of the meat and cheese, and sliced tomatoes. We tried to consume as much as we can to minimize food we have to throw out tomorrow.
"Are there any plans for today?"
"Nope," I said. I made today a sailing day, so we can go wherever."
"How about a monastery? There's one on Brač island." Alicia looked this one up.
"Put it on the iPad charts and see how long it will take to get there and back to the marina," Terry told her. With a straight shot at the speed we were going, we would get to the marina about 4:00 P.M. Not ideal, but we decided to go for it. Sadly, this meant no more sailing, since we needed top speed attained by motoring.
I had been wearing a rashguard all week to keep my skin protected from the sun, but this resulted in my face, arms, and legs being tan, with covered areas still their pastey white color. So I took a nap while sunbathing as Terry drove to our destination.
I woke up to arrive at Uvala Blaca. We didn't see any buildings on the mountainous island, but we did see hikers.
Alicia and I went for a swim toward shore. It was a fair distance of a swim- just what we needed to work off that lunch!
When we reached the shore, we saw a man in a small boat with a motor.
"Do you know where the monastery is?" Alicia asked.
"It's further down the island."
So we swam back and drove the boat a bit further down Brač. After scoping out a few more coves, we decided to turn around and head back to the marina.
I went down below for a bit.
"Ems, come up!" Terry said in an urgent tone. I ran up.
"There's a guy in a flipped kayak who needs help," he told me as I came up. It turned out to be a sail kayak.
"Do you need help?" We yelled to him.
"Yes," he nodded. He was clearly struggling.
We tied a rope to the stern of the boat and, after two throws, were able to throw it so he could catch it.
"Tie the rope to your kayak, and we'll take your things so you can come on board." It took the man some time to tie up his kayak and get his things to us. The wind was sustained at twenty knots, and the waves reflected that. He was pretty lucky that we saw him- not many boats had passed by this area, and the ones that did were smaller powerboats. They might not have been able to tow him to shore in this crazy water.
We got him on board and drove to a cove where some people had lived. It looked like a very small private beach, nothing commercial.
"Take the rope with you to shore, with the kayak. Then we can get it back." We approached the shore, Terry watching his depths to get as close as possible without running aground. The keel is 1.6 meters. He got as close as 2 meters at one point.
"Should we swim his things to him?" Alicia and I grabbed his bookbag and oar and swam them to shore, in exchange for the rope he borrowed.
"Thank you so much," he told us gratefully. Let's just hope he doesn't go back on the water to get back where he started.
The whole thing from start to finish took about a half hour.
"I find it interesting that we were looking for a monastery, and helped out someone in need instead!" Alicia said.
Alright. Our ETA was now 5:30 P.M. Let's go!
We had three hours of motoring ahead of us. The water was still very rough in the high winds.
At one point, we raised sails since we were on a beam reach, to add some more speed to the motor.
Our last few hours.
"Might as well do some laundry before we get to the marina," Terry told Alicia and me. Croatia doesn't seem to have dryers, only washers. The wind will help us right now. We each used the kitchen sink and dish detergent to clean out some clothes for the next few days, and used clothespins to hang them on the lifelines to dry.
We turned the last corner and could see the marina. We saw a young man and his lady trying to swim against the current back to their beach. They were making no progress.
"Do you need help?"
They nodded yes. We put the ladder back down and hovered near them so they could climb on board after handing us their flotation device.
"Thank you," they said with a Slavic accent. We drove them further up to an area where people were swimming and dropped them off.
"I'll drop you off further up, so the current will push you to shore," Terry told them, and they were on their way.
"Two rescues in one day!"
Certainly an adventurous way to end a trip. We filled up on gas before pulling up to the marina. We didn't see an open berth.
"Let me jump off and we'll take the berth closest to the edge," I said. Terry neared the pier and I jumped off, barefoot. I looked around for a SailCroatia guy, but didn't see any. I walked back and Terry started motoring down the pier. I ran down the pier to follow him, wherever he ended up.
There was a SailCroatia worker with the last open berth. It looked tight. This was going to be Terry's toughest med mooring. It's a shame I was dockside and not on the boat to help.
Terry reversed back into the open spot, more quickly than I would have anticipated, but in this wind, if you went too slowly, you'd get pushed to the side and have to adjust even more.
Not a perfect moor, but he did it, and nothing was broken. We brought back the boat in one piece!
"We're still getting used to med-mooring," Terry said.
"You did great!" He told us.
We fixed up the lines to secure us in. There was another SailCroatia guy there as well.
"So where did you visit?"
Terry attempted some names, with hesitations in between, so I jumped in to help him out.
"We went to Šolta Island to anchor at Uvala Nečujam, then to Korčula, Lastovo, Stari Grad, Vis Island, the Blue and Green Caves, Šibenik, Kornati, then down to Žirje and Drvenik Veli for the blue lagoon."
"Wow, she even learned all the names!"
I think he was impressed at how easily an anglophone rattled off correct pronunciations of all the islands and towns we went to.
"She told me where to go, and we went there," Terry said with a smile.
"We even saved three people on the water!" Terry started telling them our rescue stories.
"You guys are like Baywatch!"
Haha. That was one of the best comments from our trip, I think.
After settling back in, we went to the Marina center to shower and have a drink. We ate dinner at a local Konoba, where a lot of other people had already scoped out. One last family-style dinner for the three of us, since we'd be leaving the boat in the morning.
As we walked back to the boat, we saw the moon starting to rise over Split. Our last night on the boat.
We spent about an hour or two cleaning up the boat, throwing out trash and unusued food after packing up our things. We wanted her to be in step-off condition before we retired for the night.
"Ya did good, Pipi. Ya did good, kid."
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