Last week I brought you 6 Reasons Why Sailing Croatia with Med Experience was one of the best travel experiences of my life. I also promised to bring you a day by day account of what really goes on during one of these holidays, as written by two of my favourite boat-buddies, Ellie and Ryan. These two are one of the cutest couples I know. They are from Australia but currently live in England while Ryan does a stint teaching at a very uppity boys private school. Over the next week I will be transcribing their daily Med Experience diary (they take it in turns to write every other day) on AMW. Here we go!
Saturday 21st August.
Ellie
Our yacht “Jubilo” is pretty much the coolest boat I know. We’ve got the smallest crew, the head Skipper Jaksa taking the lead in the group of three yachts in our floatilla, and our cabin just happens to be the honeymoon suite! What more could you ask for during an epic week-long island-hopping sail in Croatia?
After checking-in, dumping our gear and picking up some groceries, we returned to Jubilo to meet our fellow crew-members Olivia, Erin, Stephi and Stef. Of course; all girls…Welcome to Ryan’s harem! On board, we are also lucky enough to have Greta – the witty and hilarious Tour Manager who, within an hour, had well and truly restored my faith in Med Experience.
After our old faithful “Kokomo” was played and first drinks happily “jivily’d” (Croatian lingo for cheers) and consumed, we set sail under spectacular smiles and sunshine.
In less than 30 minutes we were in the cool blue ocean, being tugged playfully behind the boat on a line with a tender on the end. You could not have asked for a better start to the trip! Conversation flowed effortlessly, and in what seemed like no time at all, we had arrived in Sipan, the first of 6 Islands we were set to visit over the coming week.
What I loved was Jaksa’s eagerness to pull out the charts and show us exactly where we were on the map, where we’d been and where we planned to go. Even better was Greta’s casual, funny yet very informative rundown on the layout of the town and the “minimal” services it housed, for instance, the “not-mini-but-nano-mart”. These guys know what they’re doing but put a little character into their jobs. As for the 6 of us, we were in no hurry to get out and explore, preferring instead to enjoy each other’s company while keeping one eye on the boisterous and exciting game of Waterpolo going on at the other end of the tiny Marina.
Later that night we were having our dinner at the nearby local restaurant, and while enjoying a little too much wine, squid, chevapi and did I mention wine, we quickly but matter-of-factly dubbed ourselves “the cool boat”… for obvious reasons. I guess we were all having a little too much fun because after a while, the restaurant owner came over and asked us to be quiet… oops.
After dinner, a silent but epic lightning storm provided the perfect backdrop as we boat hopped between the three yachts in our floatilla, introducing ourselves and getting to know members of the other crews. We didn’t even bat an eyelid when Stef produced her ‘travel candle’ to provide a bit more romantic light around the table – a bizarre concept upon reflection but made for a funny-story the day after when we heard that the “Stephfs” way of getting rid of the lads off our boat at bedtime was to say “Ok, it’s bedtime now, the tribe has spoken,” while slowly blowing the candle out.
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