After our close encounter with the vengeful goats, Lori has been focusing on eating fish and lamb.
We make a smooth crossing to the island of Korcula where we will meet up with our friends Peter and Jane. Our destination is a little town called Vela Luka. We have been here before and frankly weren’t very impressed. It was a scruffy little town with a dirty harbor and not much to say for itself.
What a difference a couple of years makes. The harbor is cleaner, the town quay is well-organized and they have moved the location of their mooring buoys to create a focal point around which the town stretches. It still doesn’t have much to say for itself but it definitely feels pleasant and relaxed.
Jane and Peter were waiting for us in a little bay just outside the harbor and so pulled up alongside us on the town pier. It’s a small thing but it’s a little strange to have used our boat to get to a “meeting”. I think as we started sailing we first thought of it as a recreation (which it still is), then as a means of going on trips to specific places (Sicily, Malta etc) but this time we were using a boat as part of an everyday life pattern - meeting with friends. When you do things like this you get a feeling for the lives of all those people who live on small islands and have to use their boats just to get by.
When we are on these trips we have a special travel credit card which gives us additional benefits when making currency conversions. In the past, this has not worked tremendously reliably. So this year Lori and I spent much time with our local Bank of America branch making sure that everything was set up correctly and all was good to go.
We try Lori’s card for the first time at an ATM tonight - “Invalid Pin”. She tries it again just in case she typed it incorrectly - “Invalid Pin”. We try mine (which has a different pin) - “Invalid Pin;” “Your card is blocked until you contact your bank”
When you are 10 timezones away from your bank, with a different telephone system in a different language, this is not easy. “1-800” numbers don’t work internationally. Fortunately there is a workaround and we can call our bank “collect”. We do, and we have two of the most frustrating people on the other end who don’t fully understand the impact of the problem (no money in Croatia) and look at their records and can see none of the data that Lori laboriously added back in Scottsdale. Gnashing of teeth!
Their best suggestion is to wait for the pins to reset at 00:01 (EDT) and try again. Not convenient for dinner, but we agree to do so.
Next morning a little after the duly appointed time, we try again - “Invalid pin”. Aarghh!!!!
Lori calls again. This time night has turned into day and we have a capable and competent person on the line who can’t understand why the folks last night couldn’t help us. In ten minutes it’s fixed and we have access to our funds.
Dinner was lovely. I am really developing a liking for raw shrimp. I have to resist the temptation to leap off our boat knife in my teeth to lock myself in a life and death struggle with vicious shrimp to bring them on board for dinner. At least that's how I think it's done. Isn't it? I saw the Sylvester Stallone movie - "Rocky III - Eye of the Tiger Shrimp".
We decide to spend a lazy day with our friends just hanging around it the little bay outside the harbor and then having dinner on board their boat. We use the time to pick the brains of Peter and John on sailing issues - these guys know more about sailing than we can ever expect to learn and even their casual observations sometime seem like deep insights to us. And they're really nice people too.
The weather is changing; winds are forecast to increase and stay strong for quite a few days. It’s time for us to part company - Peter will head south and we will continue north. For us, the weather looks like it will restrict our ability to go as far as we would like. So we replan and head for one of our favorite restaurants on the island of Solta. Mooring here is in a narrow cleft in the hills and the staff have to be creative in order to get the boats optimally parked. But they’re good at it and we have a great dinner overlooking the moored boats. The night is peaceful but we can hear the wind blowing over the hills above the inlet. Poking our nose out into the open sea is going to be interesting. We decide to head south to the larger island of Hvar.
Out of the shelter of the island it’s blowing about 25 knots and the waves that are coming down the channel and are fortunately just a bit behind us and not fully on one side of the boat. This means that we don’t get rolled over quite as much and the waves are actually helping us move forward. It’s a bumpy and salty ride but as you can see it's only gilet weather (or as Lori would have it gicle weather) so it's not really that bad.
We expected this and didn’t put our sails up other than for a little bit of the main which we have out for stability. It is always best to do this in advance rather than when the wind and waves are making life uncomfortable. So it’s surprising to see people heading out from the lee of the land with full sails and then going “It can’t be that bad ……Oh sh*t” and trying to sort it all out.
We get to Hvar and can’t park where we wanted to but we find an alternative that is a remarkable little natural harbor that has an excellent restaurant - some of the best food we’ve tasted in Croatia.
Croatia is playing soccer in the World Cup, so we’re the only people looking out over the bay, the others have their backs to us watching the TV screen. Croatia wins, so it’s good night for everyone.
Again we are sheltered from the North winds, so there is a sense of impending doom as we head out into the next channel. This time it’s over 30 knots and behaving like a gale; I’m looking at the waves and thinking of my Beaufort Wind Scale pictures and thinking this looks a lot like those Force 7 images. But True Colors takes it all in her stride and we make the crossing to Korcula with a little effort but without incident.
Beyond Korcula, as predicted, the wind dies and we can sail the last few miles to Lastovo which will be our jumping off point for Italy - but we may have to wait a few days for an appropriate weather window.
But we are fortunate, the bay in which we are moored is landlocked and surrounded by moderately-sized hills which will keep us sheltered from winds from almost any direction.