Day 8: Caves, Cooking, and Cleaning Off the Stern

 Saturday, July 25, 2015

     "Ems, I'm going to start motoring to Biševo. You can keep sleeping."

     I looked at my phone. 5:45 A.M. The sun was starting to rise and since we wanted to leave by 7:00 A.M., this was a good head start.

     I snapped some morning pictures before we set off. As we drove out, the sea was, again, like glass. Seems to be the common theme.

     Sailing around the islands is amazing when you see how the trees cover these rocky islands. They cover the landscape to create what looks like a granite- a little bit of rock mixed with dirt mixed with plantlife. And how steep the mountains dive into the sea is unlike anything I've seen.

     I came up from the cabin after putting my contacts in. I looked at our course, thinking we should go more starboard. 

     A second later, "Ems, go starboard ten degrees, I'm too lazy to get up and push the button".

     That's when you know it's bad. When you're in autopilot and are too lazy to get up four feet from the perch. I was happy to oblige, though. I could sympathize with the feeling. 

     We arrived to Biševo by about 8:00 A.M., Soon after mooring, a man in a small boat drove toward us.

     "It's 50 kuna per person to see the blue cave, or you can't moor here and have to leave."

     I read reviews where the best time to view the cave was from 10-1 P.M. 

     "Should we wait?" I asked Terry.

     "I don't know."

     "It doesn't look that much different in a few hours," the man in the boat told us.

     So we climbed onto his boat and sat down. The man picked up a couple from another sailboat, and then drove to the entrance of the cave. We must have been the first tourists of the day.

     We had to duck under to get into the cave as the boat slowly moved in. It now makes sense why you have to use their boats, as opposed to your own dinghy. Plus, with the edges of the cave being so sharp, a dinghy might get torn apart. Once we were in, he turned the motor off and pushed the boat along a loop in the cave. The cave had a bright blue glow, as the sunlight reflected off the sandy bottom.

     "There's no swimming or diving allowed between seven and three," he told us. "Once, a guy dropped his sunglasses and jumped in the water to get them. He barely scratched his head but came out with a long cut on his head," as our chauffeur pointed to his own head. 

     The blue cave was quite a sight. Water shines down into one area, outside the cave, which illuminates the cave underneath and behind that area, which is completely enclosed, save the entrance.

     After the blue cave, we motored onto Komiža to anchor for a swim. The three of us swam out a quarter mile to the shore. The number of fish I saw was greater than other places. Even cooler was that we had our own tiny section of a beach to ourselves. 

     The last stop on Vis was the green cave. Since it would take just over an hour to motor there, I cooked my chicken pasta dish for lunch. I was supposed to make it five days ago but we kept eating Croatian dinners so my cooking was unnecessary.
     Soon enough, we made it to the island of Ravnik, where the green cave was located. We anchored and drove a dinghy over. The crazy thing about this cave is that there were motor boats driving into the cave. This is incredibly dangerous because you had several people swimming in that area. Having a moving propellor is bad news for any person who gets close enough. Not to mention the fumes being trapped by the motors. So unfortunate, but the green cave was still a fun excursion. There was a hole at the top of the cave that allowed sunlight to pass into the cave to create a spotlight. Quite the nifty little thing to see.

     Cumulonimbus clouds began building up.

     "You see that?" I asked.

     "Yeah."

     Terry went to the salon to check on radar. He came back up a half hour later. 

     "It's going away from us."

     "Of course it is," I told him with a smile.

     Terry smiled back. "I don't even know why I bothered looking." There's a running joke that my mood coincides with the weather, in that it's generally sunny when I sail or wander in a new town. There have been quite a number of coincidences...

     I took the shift to motor to Stari Grad on the island of Hvar. Terry had to figure out how to extend our data package for the next week. An hour or so later he came up, with a victorious, but tiresome expression. He had to translate croatian online to jump through all the hoops entailed in extending his data package for the iPad, but he was successful!

     We arrived at Luka Tiha, one of several coves in the bay toward Stari Grad, which cost us 150 kuna to moor. A man in a small inflatable drove up to us to request payment.

     "Are you having a good night?" I asked.

     "The night is good,  every day is good! Are you Australian?"

     "No, no, we live in New York City. Why, do you get a lot of Australians?"

     "Yes. Too many!" He told me with an unfortunate expression. He handed us a receipt and drove off.

     Alicia, Terry and I hung out on the boat, enjoyed a bottle of wine, ate a light dinner of grilled cheese and proscuitto that I cooked, and just enjoyed the life that we had.

     We had discovered that there was a pull-out shower head at the stern of the boat, so we could rinse off or shower in the back.

     I decided to follow suit and shower all the way at the stern of the boat.

     "Alright, no one come up to the cockpit for the next few minutes!" I yelled down to Alicia and Terry, who were cleaning up dishes from dinner in the galley.

     "The moon is waxing, but I've got a full moon here!" I joked. When in Croatia?

     The closest boat was still far enough away that they wouldn't be able to see much of me showering off the stern. It's actually a bit chilly to shower tonight. The temperature is much nicer than previous nights. If only the nights stay this nice. That said, it was still nice to feel clean again.