Sailing with the Treleavens

Day 8, Lay Day, is spent in Korcula Marina, and everyone adventures out into this bell shaped walled town and fish bone streets. Our night is spent with Bob's crew along side in a bay over looking a monastery with the mountain range behind. As the sun goes down we have cocktails in the bow and watch a beautiful sunset.

Race 5 to the island of Mljet, is abandoned and we motor across in no wind.

Day 10, Lay Day, and the bikes are out, we are in Pomera. Our crew hire a car and explore the island and we cycle around the lake and lunch in a lake side fish café. A highlight to our day is a very old lady who wants to give us some golden peaches that smell amazing. On asking for her photo she straightened her black scarf and gave me a gummy smile.

Race 6 Ladies skipper day and its not going to be me. Rebecca takes the helm in little wind but its slow and only 7 boats finish, 3rd over the line and 3rd on handicap. Ian learns the pressures of how hard crew work is when he wakes up very sore from all the grinding the next day. With all the boats moored up to one restaurant, its presented very well and a fun evening followed.

Day 12 is spent in the inlet of Ston and visit the old Roman salt pans which are still in use and the high very narrow wall built by the Turks to protect at the time this very valuable commodity. This is the area for oysters and mussels and we have a great lunch with the guidance of Milan the rally race director who has now joined us.

Race 7, the final race to Dubrovnik, and there is high hope of the Bora wind from the North East arriving at last. We start in light winds on port gybe right on the committee boat and do a Chris Dickson gybe on the start line in front of Mark Gray and Fast Eddy, the only yacht to start on starboard. It is well executed, but sorry Mark, getting these caravans to perform; you have to pull out all stops. The wind dies and another race is abandoned with us leading.

Dubrovnik is stunning and the last supper is over looking the lit up walled town from the Hotel Excelsior. We achieve the lowest points for the rally but being the only owner yacht, provision is made for a charter yacht and the next lowest points went to Bill Whisker from Perth on another Beneteau 473.

We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, making new friends and acquaintances. To quote John Messenger most people had been racing all winter and they came to cruise whilst the only racing we have done is beating charter yachts into the marina.

We became the medic yacht, spare parts centre and our deck compressor dive gear was well used. George Girdis was so impressed he is going to buy one for Marloo.

Thanks to our crew, Rebecca, Brian, Judy and Natalie for helping us to perform so well. Ian loved catching up on all the New Zealand yachting gossip from Rebecca and almost learnt how to speak New Zealand again.

A special thanks to Bob and Sue Fraser, Bainy and Annie, Andrew and Sandy, for being such great rafting up companions,  and John Messenger and Margo for filling up our yacht with left over grog and food.

Jane Waters another old Christchurch friend of Ian's and John have joined us for a week sailing back up the coast to Split. Moored along side us in Dubrovnik is Mirabella 111, at 40 metres, a bit bigger than us. Our first night out is in Luka on the island of Sipan.We spy an Aussie flag and moor stern too along side, only to be joined by another flying a CYCA flag . It is a Beneteau 50 owned by Helen Lovett and Damien Moloney doing something similar to ourselves.

The English yacht on the other side moans about the Aussie invasion saying he has had to put up with it for the past week.

We are now heading back up the coast and if the weather holds we will get to Venice 250 miles away.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 21st, 2004 at 9:16 pm and is filed under 2004. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.