Voyage of P5 "Lili'uokalani"
from Rovinj to Zadar August 2014 - Part 2
From Mali Losinj, island of Losinj, to the island of Silba 16 nm
This was the one out of fifteen shunts, that goes wrong. Swearing, I pulled on the shunting line once more, but it was no use, something was stuck in midshunt. The pivot mast could not flip towards the new bow, but the tack of the sail was released already, so that the sail, with the center of effort way back now, pushed the old bow slowly into the wind. And there it was: Backwinded, due to incompetence! And on top of that, here came a motorboat for the rescue. I quickly pulled the boom up with the brailing lines, to take the pressure off the sail, and then turned towards the motorboat, and signalled: thumbs up- they kept their course, then the OK with thumb and digit forming a circle- no reaction. By now I was swearing ceaselessly and tried the last one: One arm up, the other down for "No, I don't need any help!", but they came on without pity.
From Mali Loinj to Silba
"Do you need help?", shouted the lady in the bow. Instead of "Can´t you see, that it´s dead calm, compared to yesterday, where were you then, by the way?", I answered, " I´m ok, but thank you for asking". I was on my way to the south again with a northerly wind blowing with Bf 4. It was the 29 th of august, and I made good way as I reached along the island of Ilovic, the close neighbor of Losinj with 6, 7 and 8 knots. To the south I could see an endless chain of green islands dwindle to the horizon, like a promise of adventure and discovery.
The next pearl in this chain was the island of Silba, http://www.silba.org/ which I reached at 3 pm, after 3 hours of sailing from Losinj. I left my boat on the beach of the single village of Silba, and started to walk towards the center, in search of a restaurant. Immediately I felt a strange atmosphere, i couldn´t account for. Everything was so... slow! There, a pedestrian pushing a trolley, but slowly. A few people in the shadow of the trees by the beach, but not too many, and not too busy. I discovered the answer to the riddle only later: There are NO CARS on the island, and that makes a difference! Peace is the outcome.
After a good meal (Cevapcici, fries, mangold and salad ) I sailed on reluctantly, because this village would have been the one place to stay and forget.
After two miles I saw a beautiful cliff with a little beach beside. Here at last I had found the perfect combination of climbing and sailing I had dreamed of , for so long. Quickly I pulled the boat up the beach, built the camp and went searching for my climbing shoes in the recesses of one of the bow hatches. The cliff was perfect, with more then a hundred meters of a steep, sometimes slightly overhanging wall, around bends, up and down. There was almost always deep water underneath, and therefore no risk of injury. I traversed for over one hour, without falling, and solved one problem after the other. Such a nice campground with bouldering area included! I finished the day with reading a bit, happily tired and peaceful.
Bouldern im Mittelmeer
From from the island of Silba to the island of Molat via Island od Ist, 12 nm
There was even a small roof jutting out from the rocks, just big enough for shelter to sleep , but each paradise has it´s flaw, and this time it was the moskitoes. After sunset the wind dropped completely and the air got stuffy underneath the wall, a foretaste for tomorrow. It was too hot to cover up with the sleeping bag, and a moskito net was the one thing I promised myself to take with me, the next time. This was so far the only contact with Croatian wildlife animals, with the exception of some dolphins, and yes, I had seen a few of the impressive griffons of the island of Cres circling high up in the air. (The hissing snake I almost trod on, was yet to come, on another island).
So I lacked a bit of sleep, as I sailed out the morning of the 30 th of august with only the slightest breeze. At 9 am it was already hot and it promised to be a calm, cloudless day. I was about 300 meters away from shore, when I reached into one of the central sailcloth bags, I had sewn, to take care of the free ends of the haliard, brailing lines, lanyards, rope shackles and sometimes a can of beer. And lo! Out jumped a rat, straight overboard into the water to leeward! As I sailed on, I looked back, but I couldn´t see it, and I kept on looking aft as I ghosted further and further away from the spot, where I had lost my stowaway. There was still no sign of it (or him, or her). Finally I opened the sheet to stop the boat, and stood up to learn something of the whereabouts of this mysterious being, but there was still no trace! At last I settled back in the stern and sailed on, rather clueless: There were rats quite capable of diving, but had this been a Muskrat? In saltwater?
It was well 5 minutes later, when I saw something move on the bow, and the rat climbed out of nowhere, and sat there, staring at me with dark eyes and wet fur. And now it dawned on me, that the rat, not being a muskrat, had deemed the distance to the shore too big, after jumping overboard, and had grabbed the shunting line, which trawled (I have to admit) in the water. I was instantly reminded of the movie and book "Life of Pi" (or "Shipwreck with tiger" in german), where the young Pi(scine) from India ends up with a tiger in a lifeboat. Exactly like them , we eyed each other and tried to figure out, what to expect. Also like them, we knew on the spot, that we were bound to spend some time together. The rat made the next move. As it started to crawl towards me, I didn´t feel exactly at ease, but neither did the rat, somehow i could sense that. Furtively it sneeked on, all the while we slowly kept sailing and staring, and I had no idea, what it was up to. Only when it had reached the center of the boat, it became clear: Quick as a lightning it jumped into the clothbag, where it had started it´s voyage, stayed there and didn´t move anymore. It had chosen the most comfortable and coolest spot on the whole boat. It seemed to know what was coming.
The wind had died completely, and the sun burned down like a red hot heated cannonball (again Hornblower). I lowered the sail and then brailed up yard and boom overhead, to get room for paddeling. I like paddeling, and find it good sport, and consider myself lucky to owe a boat that is a good sailor AND a quite tolerable paddler. As I mentioned before, I can keep up the speed well over 2 knots for hours with the paddle, when there is no wind. It´s healthy, pleasant, lightweight (you don´t need a motor with this boat) and ecological. But now, as I paddled southeast in the 6 mile stretch between the island of Silba and the Island of Ist, it took some effort to keep up this attitude, and it was no sin to pray for wind. But wind, there was none, just sweat, thirst and heat. The only relief was the thin shadow of the spars, just broad enough for the best part of my head, which blotted out the sun a bit, as I travelled slowly south south east.
From Silba to Molat
Soon I had to stop, to gulp down some draughts of water, and I didn´t forget to look after my passenger. But Otto (I had christened it meanwhile) had no intention to endanger our armistice with even the tiniest move. Only it´s eyes and it´s breathing indicated, that it was wide awake. Carefully and very slowly I lowered a screwcap full of water beside it into the bag, and it obviously knew better than to bite me, but still it didn´t move.
After 3 miles of paddeling, I decided to head a bit more south to reach the passage between the Island of Skarda, to get to the westward side of the row of islands. Besides, this alteration of the course kept my head in the shadow, as the sun had already travelled a bit to the west. After three and a half hours of paddeling and 7 miles from Silba, where we had started, we reached the beautyful and somewhat eery passage. There was a strong current , due to an undersea abyss, a rare and interesting phenomenon in the med, and it was sometimes with us and sometimes against us, very strange. On the other side of the islands, we met some feeble puffs of air and how glad was I to sail along merryly with 3 and 4 knots! At three pm I spotted a beach on he Island of Ist, where we landed to lunch and to drink. But drink I did alone, Otto refused to move. So I pushed off again, to sail and paddel another 5 miles for the island of Molat. And a very nice beach we found, again with a fantastic cliff for "Deep Water Soloing" or DWS, that´s the official term for this variation of climbing. It was late in the evening, when I got up once more to have a look at Otto with my head lamp, and I noticed, that it still hadn´t moved. Hadn´t touched the water, nor the breadcrumbs, I had left for him. He was really a distrustful one, he absolutely wanted to wait, till I was as fast asleep, as the moskitoes would let me. And so it was. The next morning there was no Otto, the screwcup empty, and the breadcrumbs gone. But he hadn´t forgotten to pay the ferry fare: He had left some little brown objects all over the boat!
Paddeling, but elsewhere (Lago Maggiore) and not so hot
Central Sailcloth Bags
From from the island of Molat to Zadar, mainland 7 and 23 nm
It felt like the interior of a jet engine, the pictures on the wall were rattling, and I had to cling to the blanket, to keep it from fom leaving the bed and then the room through the window to the south. It was the third day of a strong Bora, and I had rented a small appartment overlooking the village harbour of Molat, to ride it out.The luxury of double bed, shower, kitchen and television was still very appealing, after so much lack of civilisation. I had even a balcony to the south directly above the pier, where my little boat rode safely attached. The layout of the appartment was long and thin, and the Bora entered by the intake (entrance door) exactly to north, followed by the combustion chamber (kitchen/ living-, bedroom, and left again by the nozzle of the balcony door. To close the door, I had to lean on it, it was blowing with force seven and eight.
3 days ago, I had sailed and paddled the 7 miles round the southern cape of the island of Molat to cross the beautiful bay of Brgulje for the harbor of Molat. During the next day the berths had been taken one after the other by yachts, seeking shelter from the oncoming Bora. I had taken the skipper of one of them for a ride round the bay, and in return gotten an invitation for dinner . As I stepped down to the harbour with a bottle of wine and the ukulele in hand I remembered his enthousiastic resumee: "Feels like riding a sidecar!". After the dinner the skipper brought up his guitar, and we started to play together. Later in the evening I played some russian songs like "Katjuscha" and "Podmoskownyje Wetschera" but my repertoire was soon exhausted. To keep to the point, we searched the yacht´s music sheet book, and the most "russian" song we could find was "Winds of change" by the scorpions. As we reached the end of the verse, we couldn´t continue, because the refrain was on the next page, and in this moment the Bora flipped over the page! "You see, winds of change!", said the skipper of another yacht, who had joined us in the meantime, and we had a good laugh.
From Molat to Zadar
The next morning the wind was down to Bf 4 with gusts of 5 and everybody started to leave. It was 4 th of september, when I left my cozy appartment to sail the last stretch of my voyage to reach my final destination, Zadar, a beautyful old city on the mainland. Outside the bay, there was plenty of wind out of the north, and I had to turn the boat´s bow downwind to get it to broadreach to the south east.
Now with a crew of two people this is no problem. First you have to trimm the mast to windward, then sheet in, then one crew applies the paddle to turn the boat downwind, while the other hikes out.When the boat has been set on the reaching course, you can ease the sheet again a bit, but one crew keeps the weight well aft, and the "hiker" can move in a bit again, also staying to the back of the outrigger. The "Center of effort" or CE pulled with the mast well to windward, together with the crew´s weight at the back of the Proa, keeps the boat reaching without having to steer.
But when you´re singlehanded in strong wind, you have to hike out, so there´s nobody to sit in the back of the boat to weigh it down. You may pull the sail to windward as far as you can, when you sheet in, the boat won´t turn. You have to apply the steering oar from the outrigger, at the same time play the sheet, you pull on the oar with all your might, but the boat stubbornly keeps it´s course, sometimes it´s really a nuisance. But once you have forced it downwind, it keeps it´s course, so why won´t it turn?
I had racked my brain a hundred times with this problem, but now, during my forced stay on the island of Molat, i had eventually found the answer: A traveller, to move the lead of the sheet to windward. As my sheetblock is attached to a loop around the beam, it was easy to try it out. I loosened the choke of the loop and slid it completely over to the windward side of the hull. So when I sheeted in, I could pull the boom more than 30 cm further to windward, and the boat turned!
Swiftly I reached along between the islands of Cervinac and Sestrijuni and raced with a 15m yacht, but lost, even if not by very much. Then I turned upwind and shunted up the passage between the Islands of Rivanj and Ugljan, and soon bore away to south east again to reach Zadar in the afternoon.
END