6 April 2023 - Kremik

Light airs, first thing, enabled us to slip out of the marina, a bit before 9.00am, for our maiden voyage of this year. The two Marko’s then came out in the rib, with our Epirb (emergency position indicating radio beacon). It had been sent away for new batteries and had just arrived back in the nick of time. This device sets off if it gets submerged in water, should the boat sink, alerting the emergency services, so it’s reassuring to have it back on board.  We are taking two days to get close to Split airport, as our son Chris is arriving tomorrow for the Easter weekend.


We had a spectacularly fun sail to Kremik, 30miles south of Biograd, on the Croatian mainland. We had winds between force 4 and force 6, mainly on the beam, which meant that we were cracking along very nicely. Our top speed was 9.8 knots. We had put one reef in the main and had to half the amount of jib we had out during the journey. There was just one point when we briefly overpowered and otherwise, it was great just cracking along under blue skies, even if it was very cold. We dressed for the weather. We think this is the first time we’ve had our foulies on since Equinox has been in the Mediterranean.

We also had an encounter with dolphins, on this first day out. This is always such a joy. They were big bottle-nose dolphins. We’re quite sure that one of them, that came streaming along side us was between a metre and one and half metres long, probably the biggest we’ve ever seen.

Marina Kremik is a very nice marina, giving us good shelter from the big north winds this evening; the electric hook up also enabling us to have the heating on and keep warm overnight. We don’t leave the heating on all night as it’s quite noisy, but, at least we retire to bed in a warm boat, and can warm up quickly, when we get up. Last night the temperature was forecast to hit 0 degrees C; tomorrow at 5am, it’s due to only hit 4 degrees C!




After a late lunch, we enjoyed a lovely walk along the cliff path, along the coast from the marina. We didn’t make it all the way to the nearby town; that would have been an hour in each direction, but it’s lovely to look at the coast from the land perspective.

Miles today        31

Miles in 2023     31

Tricia (& Steve)

ps I am embarking on a search for the most ridiculous boat name of the year.  This is the first contender. 


Steve


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

24 - 27 March 2023 - Amersham / Zagreb / Biograd

Image
Our Spring / Summer adventures started when the alarm went off at 04:20 on 24th March. The flight to Zagreb was completely full, the passengers including Welsh football supporters going to watch their team play Croatia in the Euro qualifiers, and a Para-Olympic Boccia team going to play-offs for next year’s Olympics. We had a superb 22 hours with our friends Stevo and Jasna in Zagreb, during which we managed to walk around the centre of the city. There are lots of late 19th century buildings, making it very attractive, along with the outside cafes and restaurants of European café society. The centre being largely pedestrianised and serviced by trams just adds to it’s appeal. The cathedral is undergoing some repairs after the earthquake a couple of years ago Ties were invented in Croatia, and there is a shop selling beautiful examples If you want a Tesla, this guy was the original On the way to the bus station, on Saturday morning, the taxi driver had said that, as we were travelling ...
Read more

1 June 2023 - Luka Jurjeva, Lastovo

Image
This is expected to be our last day in Croatia, we plan to head to Italy tomorrow.  We woke to a completely tranquil scene, with barely a ripple on the water. We headed ashore in the tender, and walked into Ubli, where there is a supermarket.   It is more than 4 km in each direction, but we needed to buy enough bread to last us today and tomorrow.    The road is mostly quiet, but there are no footpaths, and when the cars come, they are not expecting to encounter pedestrians, so it is a bit daunting at times. The views make it all worthwhile, and we were rewarded at the inland end by finding a larger and better stocked supermarket than we had expected.    The return was uneventful and we enjoyed our well deserved lunch when we arrived back on board. We have read that the chimneys on the island are unique, and are determined by your family and status.  We haven’t seen enough to have good comparisons, but we did see one that was quite noticeable...
Read more

20 September 2023 - Benitses and Kerkyra (Corfu Town)

Image
As we had booked into the marina for 2 days, but completed the necessary maintenance tasks in 1 day, we took the opportunity to go into Corfu town for some site seeing. The bus stop was right outside the marina, so it was very easy,  there was even a ticket machine at the bus stop (of which more later). Alighting from the bus, we started to wander through the narrow streets and alleyways of the old town. It was the sort of place to ignore the maps and just wander and see what you would find. Like many other places in this part of the world, Corfu has a very long history.   It was one of three Greek naval powers in the fifth century BC, with Athens and Corinth. Since then it has changed hands multiple times. It was part of the Republic of Venice from the 12th century, and there are still many buildings and avenues which seem typically Venetian. They built two huge forts to guard the city against pirates and the Ottomans, making it one of the most fortified places in Europe....
Read more