Croatia No.1

Hello Again

 

Croatia, what a night to remember !!!   We arrived at  6 PM at a small town called Cavtat.  Cavtat is just 8 miles south of the old walled city of Dubrovnik. Dropped anchor in 6 meters of water amongst a dozen or so yachts in a nice big bay.  Jumped into our tender and off to check in. Very efficient but rather expensive.  Navigation fees, light dues, Govt. admin fee, chart and cruising permit for 3 months, a total of  NZ $ 400.  Back to Shamal on dusk at 8.30 pm.  The dreaded Bora  wind starts to increase.   The Bora ( Katabatic mountain wind ) is a “ speciality “ of the eastern Adriatic coast and can be very dangerous. It can blow with sudden NE gusts.  The wind by 10 pm is now increasing to 25 Kts  so the skipper decides to put more anchor chain out.  Another 10 meters so now we will have 45 in total. As the chain was going out we started dragging  and got rather too close to a yacht moored behind us.  An Italian yacht next to us also was dragging. Several yachts were also trying to re anchor which made for a very busy bay.  So up anchor and out of here !!!  But we also lifted the anchor of the yacht behind us.  Now the wind is 35 kts.  If that wasn’t bad enough we were towing him to our new anchorage !!!  Alec wondered why at 2600 rpm Shamal was only making 1 kt into the headwind. I took the helm while Alec managed to drop the other yachts  anchor.  Really surprising nobody came on deck of the yacht that we were towing being  totally oblivious to the drama that was unfolding.   Now at midnight, after being at our new anchorage for two hours, we again started dragging - bugger !!!  We wanted to go to bed.  Finally we re anchored again in deeper water,  15 meters, amongst  the Super Yachts.