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.
