Croatia

I must admit, Croatia is one too-cute town after another, on perfect little islands.  But don't look too closely...there's a veritable soup of plastic bits swirling in pools here and there offshore and covering the shoreline.   Not that other places we’ve been haven’t had similar problems, but not like this.  In Turkey, the beach debris seemed to be mainly household plastic with Hebrew, Turkish and Arabic writing, and it actually made for interesting beach combing as the kids found toys, shoes and other oddities (the mannequin foot was my favorite).  And in the Chesapeake, even the tiniest and most remote beach we can find is guaranteed to have at least several balloon strings from the American infatuation with releasing balloons to celebrate events. Here it seems to be more commercial/industrial waste, consisting of tar balls like big piles of poop, nets, bins and containers.  We also had our first experience with a privately owned bay.  Who knew you could own the restaurant on the beach and also charge anyone $50 for anchoring up to half a mile offshore. 

Our favorite thing in Croatia is to sail to a new island every day,anchor in a secluded little bay and spend the evening dinking around on shore (and wishing for at least occasional internet).  Provides a great opportunity for "Strike Team Alpha" to practice our moves...we can now the get skiff launched off the bow and ready to zip to shore in 4 minutes 10 seconds! 

We're now in Pula, near the border between Croatia and Slovenia.  We'll stay here for a few days for a birthday celebration with our Slovenian friends, then we'll head back down the Adriatic.

Looking down to the town quay in Kotor, Montenegro. 

Our boat is circled in black.



The town of Vis, Croatia, with charter boats

at the town quay

View of the town of Unije, Croatia,

 from our anchorage



Tenho anchored near Kut, Croatia, while the

kids find hermit crabs



 



Maggie and her home-made looking glass



sailing to Montenegro

There’s something very unique and slightly peculiar about doing multiple day/night crossings.  First, there’s the “preparing for a long passage” mentality that takes over, and we fill up with water, fuel, food, clean laundry, and send last e-mails, as if we were setting off on a wagon train out west.  Once at sea, there’s a sense of just biding time, and we fall into a routine of keeping occupied with games, reading, movies, and mulling over future plans.    

On this crossing, we sailed past the entrance to the Gulf of Corinth, crossing the track we made last October when we sailed from Sicily to Greece.  Both John and I were tempted to turn east and do it all over again!  What a different feeling it is now, with the end of our trip in sight.  In just two months, I have plane tickets to fly with the kids (and cat) from the Azores back to the US, while John will finish sailing the final leg with my two brothers-in-law.  On one hand, I was tempted to have us all sail back together, but sailing across the Atlantic isn’t actually that much fun for the kids, so instead we’ll spend those last few weeks on my parents’ farm in Wisconsin.   

But back to the crossing.  Without any land nearby, we find we get inordinately excited about any signs of land…anything that isn’t water or wind.  Like the lost little bird that flew into the cabin and then stayed on our boat for awhile eating bugs, or the night hawk that flew past, or the phosphorescent plankton in the water at night which makes it look like we’re sailing on top of the Milky way.  Especially exciting…the ZZZZING of the fishing line!  Fish on!  It’s our family at its best, adrenaline and spirits high, everyone wanting to get the filet knife, but not wanting to jinx it until the fish is in the boat, and Maggie doing her special fish dance.   Day two was a repeat, an even bigger tuna this time!   

We’ll stay here in Montenegro in the Bay of Kotor for a few days, then head to Croatia.

Little tuna...



Big tuna!

Sailing alongside the mountains of Montenegro

in the Bay of Kotor

Approaching the town of Kotor, at the base of 

the "Black Mountain" that gave Montenegro

its name

 

leaving Greece, heading to Montenegro

Yesterday we had a wonderful last day on the Peloponnese, driving out to almost the end of the wild and dramatic Mani, the central peninsula of the Peloponnese.  Traveling off-season is such a treat, having normally crowded beaches and tourist sites all to ourselves.  I'd love to come back and hike the rugged peaks of the Taygetos Mountains, but as in a quote shared with me by a fellow cruiser in Turkey, Robert Frost nailed it when he said "Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back." 

Tonight is our last stop in Greece in the Bay of Navarino.  As we prepared to drop our anchor, we imagined what it must have been like in 1827, when the bay was filled with 89 anchored Turkish and Egyptian warships, and the British fleet of 26 ships entered the bay.  When the battle was over, 53 of the Turkish/Egyptian ships had sunk (including 6,000 deaths) and the Greeks were on their way to independence. 

Tomorrow we leave Greece, go past Albania, and to Montenegro.  Two nights under sail and we should arrive Saturday.  Although we'd like to spend more time in the Greek Ionian Islands on the way there, we'll take advantage of the favorable winds the next few days and make some tracks.  It will be a nice change...today we had the wind on our nose all day (meaning we had to motor all day), despite the fact that we went south from Kalamata, then west around the point, and then north to Pylos.  How can the wind possible blow that many directions in one day?  That's sailing (errr...motoring) in the Med!



Phoneas beach



The subterranean river of the Diros caves all to ourselves

Castle in the Bay of Navarino, built by Turks in 1573

sailing around the Peloponnese

Slowly working our way around the Peloponnese...  Koiladia on the northeast side was our last stop with friends before heading off alone again.  The bay had nearby hills for hiking and harvesting wild arugula and asparagus, and a beach filled with plastic debris which made for good boat-building material for the kids.  The funniest thing was when we were on the boat doing schoolwork, when all of a sudden John looked outside and yelled “BUOYS!”  Some fisherman had apparently lost a whole box of small doughnut-shaped buoys overboard somewhere upwind of us, and so for the next half hour, John and the kids had a mad game of chase, zipping around the bay in the dinghy and scooping up buoys before they drifted to shore.  It was the Greek version of Harry Potter’s Quidditch!  

Then we sailed to the Byzantine walled city of Monemvasia.   Monemvasia’s Eastern Orthodox church was modeled after the Aya Sofya church in Istanbul.  What a tangled history…both served at various times as either a church or a mosque as the Greeks and Turks fought over the land, culminating in the “1923 population exchange”, where about 1.5 million Greeks moved from Turkey to Greece, and 500,000 Muslims from Greece to Turkey in an “agreed mutual expulsion.” 

 

We sailed/motored around the southern Cape Maleas of the Peloponnese on a calm day with a huge pod of striped dolphins, and then spent an evening anchored in the funny little bay of Porto Kagio.  We drifted in circles on anchor and read aloud the stories of the Trojan War, as the wind blew down from the barren hills topped with odd square towers of the Mani inhabitants, the true originators of the word “maniac” (notwithstanding any legitimate claims to that title by Maine residents).

 

In Kalamata, in between eating way too many fat black olives, we rented a car to visit Sparta and (what else?) their stunning olive museum, the Byzantine walled city of Mystra, and to hike in the Taygetos mountain range.  One  more stop in the Peloponnese, and then we’ll head to the Ionian Islands and up towards the Adriatic.



The "S.S. Minnow" is ready to sail in Koiladia

 

Chasing errant Greek fishing buoys

Sailing to the walled city of Monemvasia

 

Looking down from Monemvasia to Tenho, the only
sailboat  in the marina (circled in black).

 

Aya Sofya in Monemvasia.  First a church,

it was a mosque while under Turkish rule, and is

now restored as an Eastern Orthodox church.





And here's our photo of the Aya Sofya in Istanbul

from our visit in December, with minarets

from when it was converted to a mosque in 1493. 

In 1935 it became a museum.



Kids watching dolphins from the bow





Striped Dolphin



 

Taygetos Mountains from the castle on top of

the Byzantine walled city of Mystras

Greek lunch!  Wild arugula, cheese, bread, olives & wine