Rab Old Town and Marina

Life in Rab

As the winds generally were SE for the week we cruised northward broad reaching downwind (most enjoyable point of sail for us - and disproving Helen’s theory that we always seem to be bashing to windward! **but see below) most days through the islands until we reached Rab which is a lovely small town with a good harbour - and of course shops, wifi etc etc! So now enjoying a few days ashore sightseeing, catching up with jobs etc and waiting for a storm to pas through. Then we’ll begin our journey south. Over the next 4 weeks we plan to cruise south via Zadar (where Suzie will join us), then Split (Suzie departs and Nick and Lindy join), Dubrovnik (another crew change - N&L depart and Simon and Lynn join). From Dubrovnik we plan to return via Italy to Malta with friends Graham and Anne-Marie aboard. Looking forward very much to sailing with friends and continuing to explore the coast and islands of this beautiful area. Best wishes Iain and Helen * I like to record this in the blog in case I don’t remember in a few years where we’ve been!! ** except now that we’ve gone as far north as we can on this summer’s cruise and now need to start heading south, the wind is going to be ……yes of course a strong southerly!! F6/7 today so waiting for it to subside a little - forecast F4/5 tomorrow.

The Kornat Sunset

So what did we miss most? We were able to manage our water, fuel and electricity use carefully, provisions ran a bit low but we were happy to eat simply, we were more than happy not to get newspapers to read about the ongoing political turmoil/squabbles and wars, but we did miss emails/whats apps etc from family and friends - away from “civilisation” (albeit only for a few days and not far away!) its very clear whats most important in life. A great benefit of this area is that there are so many islands, most days we can choose where we go based on the wind direction**. The downside is there are also so many rocks, shoals etc around that there’s a lot of careful navigation/pilotage to do. Some passages between islands are quite narrow and had only a metre or so under the keel so careful nav work required.

The Kornat National Park

Skradin to Rab

A very different and interesting week in the Kornat national park and nearby islands. We headed out from Skradin, down the spectacular Krka river, after a little incident with a charter boat which lost control as it left the pontoon in strong winds and hit our bow taking a chunk out the gelcoat - managed to patch it up by hanging over the bow as Helen mixed the gelcoat filler and passed it down to me - repair doesn’t look to professional but it will do the job until we get home. Anyway, just an example to explain why we dislike sailing where there are lots of charter boats!! We set off fully provisioned, fuel and water topped up, batteries fully charged etc as we knew we’d probably not find any shops, not be able to get water, not have shore power electricity for the week in the outlying islands - many are uninhabited and the few that are, only for the summer and with only a very few houses and a restaurant or two in the popular bays. Some wonderfully unspoilt places and a lovely raw, bleak beauty (almost a moonscape). Just for the record*, we visited Smokvica (Lovely restaurant Piccolo and great walks/views), Kameni Zakan, Kornat (Vrulje), Levrnaka (U Lojeni) (beautifully quiet unspoilt anchorage), Dugi Otok (Bozava), and Premuda (Krijal).

The Krka National Park