Rock 'n' no Roll

Laden with enough fresh tuna for every meal for a week we continued north through the myriad islands off the Croatian coast. Our next stop was Zadar, a place with plenty of living history and an interesting modern twist! Zadar was another of the many towns first built by the Romans. What is surprising is just how much Roman stuff is still around, particularly town walls with impressive arched gates. Other bits have been put to good use over the ages. This Byzantine church, built in the 9th century, has used lots of Roman bits. Stones from an old Roman forum were used as its foundations and paving, if you look closely you can even see bits of old pillars in the base layers! There is also a big cathedral with a rather nice story behind it. Back in the day this whole area was run by the Venetians. Zadar was Roman Catholic which the Venetians didn't like. A gang of crusaders visited Venice and asked for the loan of some ships to go and  do their thing in the Holy Land. The Veneti...

After our scooter adventure we moved to the north coast of the island of Vis. Like much of the European coastline, Croatia has a lot of German concrete from WW2. On Viz we came across this spectacular rather spooky example. Submarines, the menace of the seas, were very vulnerable to air attack when resupplying, this was the German answer to the problem. Many of these submarine pens were built along the coast line, they now make useful docking places for visiting yachts! I reckon each pen would hold 4 submarines. Just opposite the pen was small concrete dock, ideal for setting up the barbeque, and after a barby, any good Aussie must swim - bottoms up! With the last of the meat cooked on the barby we needed to restock. Chris set to work (I don't have the patience) - he got a fish! Well sort of.... thank goodness for supermarkets! Our time was to come though.... We carry an inflatable canoe on board, its nice t...

The sun did come out for Dubrovnik, a beautiful medieval walled city but oh the people! 3 cruise ships were along side for the day - that's 12,000 people on top of those staying there - and its still low season! We did however manage to find a nice quiet and somewhat unusual anchorage for a sea going boat. A couple of miles up the river upon which Dubrovnik was built - we could have been on the Norfolk broads. With both bow and stern anchors out we snuggled up to to the reeds for the night. We are used to having dolphins playing under the bows but a duck is a first! From Dubrovnik we got into the first of hundreds of Croatian islands, the reason this area is such a popular cruising area for charter boats. Hilly, rocky and very green (yes we know why!) coming out of gin clear water. Our trusty steeds got the push this year. We hardly used the bikes last year because Italy was so hilly. As the Adriatic and Greece are very much the same we splashed out on a pair of e...

The boat has spent the winter in the water in a small place called Preveza on the west coast of Greece, just south of Corfu. I came out a week early to get everything ready for the season then sailed up the 50 miles to Corfu where it was easier for Melanie to get to with Woody. All went well with preparations and the Greek sun shone - I didn't realise at the time that I should have made the most of it! I had a nice 2 day sail up to Corfu; we spend the next couple of days provisioning and enjoying Kirkyra, the main town of Corfu waiting for a good wind to take us to Montenegro, 150 miles north and our first stop for this year. We had a fast sail north and as the sun set on the first day I heard the exciting 'whizz' of the fishing rod reel - we had a bite! We slowed the boat down and scooped a nice fat tuna from the water. We made good time and early the following day with 20 knots of wind behind us we sailed into the Bay of Kotor at the north end of Montenegro's sh...

After a lovely 24 hours relaxing in the sunshine on our little island where we made landfall in Greece, we headed over to Corfu, the last leg for Melanie and Woody. Greece has a lovely feel about it. The people are super friendly and the pace of life slow. The driving is super sensible and uncrowded, bliss on our bikes after the lunacy of Italy! The Ionion Islands, the 5 islands down the west coast of Greece- Corfu, Lefkas etc, were a British protectorate for the first half of the 19th century. The legacy is that much English is spoken and there is a cricket pitch in the centre of Corfu town! From Corfu Melanie and Woody headed home and Gordon, my friend from Canada arrived for my last couple of weeks. Some big winds were brewing and unable to find adequate shelter on Corfu we headed over to the mainland where we found a lovely lagoon sheltered on all sides. The wind blew hard for a couple of days but we managed to get ashore on our bikes and explore some of the mainland. Citrus cr...

From Naxos and Mount Etna on the east coast of Sicily we sailed down to the large city of Catana to meet Tim who was coming out for the weekend – and oh what a weekend! Tim was hoping for a last bit of sunshine; what he got was a belly full of rain – but sailing is never without its dose of excitement! The rain started just as we reached Catana on Friday and dropped anchor. Unhappy with the exposure of the anchorage we found a place against a rather ragged but well protected piece of unused sea wall in the harbour. Tim arrived at 11.30 pm after a long drive from Palermo. After an excellent Sicilian lunch out on Saturday the weather perked up and the wind was blowing. We set off south to give Tim a sail – and caught our first   fish since the Atlantic coast of France – and this time we landed it! It was a Bonito, from the tuna/mackeral family and half way between in size. Our stop for the night was in the little river at Brucoli, an interesting little place which serve...