Well...... I have a story to tell, so please make yourselves a cup of coffee, or an alcoholic beverage of your choice and settle in.
The last time we spoke, we were preparing to leave Dubrovnik. We had prepared the boat, had water, provisions, had deflated the rubber ducky and stowed it...... all but fuel and as we had missed the fuel berth for the day would have to fill up at 7am on the morning of departure.
I hadn't slept well the night before departure due to a mixture of nerves, excitement and creaking mooring lines and we almost delayed our departure but decided to crack on as the plan was for me to sleep as much as I could after we had checcked out of Croatia. Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men........
Karma Waters (the Australian boat from Rosslyn Bay) had left the day before planning to anchor out for the night and then check out early the following morning at Dubrovnik, however they had found favourable winds and had kept going on the journey south and were therefore a good 12 hours ahead of the rest of the fleet.
When we awoke (an hour late as I had confused the time difference and had set the clock for 7am instead of 6am!), Broke Aweigh had already left as they were planning to check out at Cavtat. We went round to the fuel berth and filled up our taks before heading off to the customs quay at Dubrovnik. When we reached our first destination we Lady Olivia tied up to the quay. Andrew came running down the quay to tell us that they were (literally) on the wrong side of the fence and had been ordered to move.
We tied up at the big nasty stone quay on bollards that were big enough and far enough apart to hold the titanic with just a bow a stern line. We were still using our old, horribly thick mooring lines which had been supplied with the boat which necessitated us having a bowline at each end of the lines, one attached to the boat and an enormous loop round each of the bollard ashore (I HATE BOWLINES ON MOORING LINES!).
Craig invited Lady Olivia to come and raft up and this was done uneventfully enough. Andrew and Craig went ashore to carry out the formalities and I joined Kate on board Lady Olivia for a coffee. We were keeping a close eye on the lines as the swell and occassional gusts were pushing our noses on to the quay.
Andrew arrived back with 15 to 20 minutes, however Craig was delayed as we had some VAT stuff to do. We peacefully sitting watching the world go by when I realised that our stern line had come adrift at the Shirley Valentine end! Did I mention that I hate bowlines on mooring ropes!
We sprung into action Andrew turned on his engine and started to push Shirley's stern back on to the quay. Thank goodness he was there!!
About the same time, a surly customs office came down the quay who we assumed had come to help us....... instead he was there to tell us to move as the ferry was coming in! He reluctantly threw us our line (which we reattached properly!) and continued to insist that we leave. I (I like to think) quietly and calmly told him that my husband was still inside and if he could go and see what was holding him up we could be on our way. He declined this request politely and continued to insist that Lady Olivia leave immediately. The gallant Andrew (my hero of the moment) refused to leave me alone, but under continuous bombardment from the lovely customs man, had to leave and they set off down the bay. When the ferry came in it missed me by about 3 feet!
Craig sauntered back to the boat about 20 minutes later, totally oblivious to the event of the last half hour. By this time, I had started to sort out proper slip lines and we were able to cast off uneventfully from the titanic sized bollards and set off south with chests heaving (mine!).
The weather forecast look good for the trip with light northerly winds swinging from east to west which were perfect for us. I must mention at this point that 4 individual skippers and crews (one with a meterological background) had examined a plethora of different weather forecast sites and had drawn that same conclusion..... the wind gods were smiling on us.
The promised winds were blowing as we left Dubrovnik and we hoisted the sails, however within a few nautical miles it had swung round 'onto our nose' and we reluctantly revved up our Volvo Pentax and drops the sails.
The first day of our journey passed fairly uneventfully and we both tried to get as much sleep as possible. We had a hearty lunch and settled into a kind of routine with our watches. I was trying to let Craig get as much rest as possible as it was important to me to have him rested if things went pear shaped.
As it grew dark, I still felt fairly alert and Craig went down below for a sleep around midnight. I have never been totally in charge of a boat before during the night and was a little nervous. I donned my life jacket and safety line even though it was fairly calm.
After a while I started to relax and even to get a little bored. The darkness and rolling seas were soothing and it was a bit difficult to stay alert. I brightened up a little when we lost our depth sounder readings, however found out later that this was because the water was too deep to get a reading. Not what we are used to in Moreton Bay! The boat was on auto pilot, under motor and all I had to do was keep an eye out for approaching boats on the radar and try to stay alert. I played exciting games like seeing how many times I could pleat my safety line on its connection part from different parts of the cockpit. Kate told me later that she had been dancing around in the cockpit singing Abba songs while Andrew snored below! What hadn't I thought of that?
I was soon abruptly woken from my reverie by a dolphin jumping out of the water right next to the boat and shortly after that the radar started to light up like a christmas tree with lots of flashing purple freckles on it. I sussed out that this meant I may be approaching some things of significance and started to pay attention. Craig had seen one boat on his watch so I wasn't expecting company, however I was soon overtaken by a massive ocean liner and was then in the thick of a fishing fleet. This kept me awake for a few hours......
I was planning to wake Craig around 4am however he woke shortly before that and I sent below to rest. I watched a couple of episodes of two and a half men (which I love but I think may send any intelligent person to sleep!) and then settled in for a snooze.
Around 6am, Craig woke me from the deepest sleep I had had in days to tell me that there was a storm approaching and that I should probably get up. At this point we were about 30 nautical miles (nms) off the Albanian coast. We had been advised to steer well clear of this coastline as it is apparently regularly patrolled by Albanian police vessels so we were basically following a straight line to Corfu.
Albania is described in our pilot guides as 'a sad and desperate country trying to shake off the shackles of communism'. You are adviseed to contact your embassy before travelling there, to make sure you do the right thing by the 'thorough' but 'fair' officials, to make sure you don't need medical assistance as it is poor to non-existant, not to have ANY dental treatment, not to drink the water or milk, to wash any fruit or vegetables before use, that hepatitis and AIDS are rife, not to get in to an altercation with anyone as gun carrying is common and you will probably come off worst etc etc. You get the picture..... this did not sound like a sunny, happy place for a holiday.
We managed to almost skirt around the edge of the first storm by heading out to sea, however still copped around 30 to 35 knot winds and the sea was whipped up into a confused 2 to 3 metre swell.
I have to interject at this pint to say that I think sailors (with all due respect of course) are a little like fishermen in some regards..... you know; the one that got away gets bigger and bigger every time the story is told. In my humble experience, it is actually quite difficult to tell the actual height of a wave, particularly in a sloppy swell. If you are in 12 metre waves (which sound horrendous, I concede!), as long as they are smooth, rolling waves you apparently just ride up one side of the wave and surf down the other, trying desparately to stop your boat turning side on to the waves. In short, choppy waves of any significant height, you crash down off the top of one wave and bury your nose into the next one which covers the boat in salt water. This is what was happening to poor Shirley, but she valiantly chugged on. Craig and I were hand steering at this point in an effort to reduce the impact.
We have lost track now as to how many storms we went through and when, however we have agreed that we think we went through at least one more before coming abreast of Vlore in Albania around lunch time. We carried on for another hour or so before deciding to take our chances in Albania.
As we poked our nose into the channel, the winds dropped off and turned around to the north east as had been promised by the wind gods. We decided (wisely or not), with this turn of events to keep heading south and retraced our steps towards Corfu. We even got our sails up again briefly, however once again we were soon slamming into head winds.
Around this time, we received a text message from Broke Aweigh to say that they were heading into Vlore due to engine trouble and were relieved that at least one boat we know of was safe. We tried to return the text however our Croatian mobile had run out of credit and our Australian mobile wouldn't work. Maybe 3G don't have a reciprocal agreement with Albania yet!
We tried to raise anyone we could think of on the VHF radio, however we seemed to have no effective way of contacting the outside world. The squalls were now bringing rain and life was decidedly uncomfortable. Craig was resting on the cockpit floor at one point as I wasn't game to let him out of my sight. The diesel fumes started to get to him and he looked a little green for a while. At one point we buried the nose so efficiently into a wave that water poured half way up the dodger and into the cabin.
It is about this point that I stopped caring about the fact that I had not fed my fish in Happy Aquarium that day and whether not logging in for a few days would mean the loss of acquiring the much promised female mate for my maturing frog. One also stops caring if you have exceedingly levels of body odour, showering becomes a hazy memory as does other formerly important hygiene. We were existing on muesli bars and nuts as we really couldn't stomach much else and couldn't be bothered preparing a proper meal in the swell.
About 24 nms from Corfu (which we couldn't see at this point through the clouds), Craig informed me that he was worried about fuel consumption. We were down to about one third of a tank and were currently doing 3 knots of headway at 2,600 rpms. Even if we had put the sails up Corfu was still hours and hours away. With yet another nasty looking storm approaching, we decided to head back to Vlore (again).
End of part one for now as we have to go into town for a mobile phone.... watch this space!!
xx
Lesley
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