Back in Croatia

Hi all Sue here

Cant believe we are now in August!! Time flies when you are having fun and we are certainly doing that this year with lots of visits from family.

Gaynor and Alec arrived 7th June for a week and as it was their first visit onboard Nimrod we decided to have an easy week. We idled up the Krka river to the magnificent waterfalls and although we visited them last year they were still just as stunning second time around

Krka Falls	Family of swans visiting us

After visiting the falls and chilling around the river for a few days we then sailed to Ostrica to spend the last two days of their holiday. We all had such a great time that they have now rebooked to come back and join us in Montenegro in September. I think rations need to be reduced and beatings increased!! As promised they are now going to feature on “The Blog” Look forward to seeing Gaynor & Alec again soon.

Great fun up the Krka river	Chilling on Nimrod

We now had 2 weeks to chill and catch up with some jobs. Chris got busy on the sewing machine, making a cover for the BBQ, a toiletery bag for the shower on back steps and a big cushion for moi. We had the most idyllic spot in a little bay in Necujam. Tied back to the rocks we had our own little swimmimg pool behind Nimrod. Bliss

Necujam	Sewing time

Time to move on towards Split to meet up with Caroline & Rich who arrived on 28th June for 3 weeks. Several trips to Lidl to stock up, thank heaven for Dolly Trolley and my trusty steed Chris!! Shopping is a major excursion and can take all day especially when you get back to boat and then have to find homes for it all!! What fun!!

Trusty steed Chris	Dolly Trolley and her mates

First sail with Caroline & Rich was across to Vis. A long day sail and not a particularly nice one but had to be done as the weather was about to turn against us. Anchored in a very safe bay Rogacic, not far from Vis. The next day we hiked over to Vis, taking one of Chris shortcuts that was supposedly a path!! I was great fun exploring Vis by jeep. Hiking down to remote coves and visiting a winery.

There is a path through that hole in the bushes!!	Exploring Vis

After Vis we decided to head North up as far as Telasicia National Park. We had some good sailing days including getting the beast out!! Richard was our Captain for 3 weeks and although I think he loved it maybe his crew were a bit of a challenge at times!! Its not that easy planning a passage when you have weather, food shops, chill days and just to add a bit more of a challenge, The Football!! to consider.

The Beast	Best inflateable ever

The National Parks are very beautiful but at 400kn to 600kn a day to visit they are very expensive. Glad we did it though as we probably wont be in Croatia again. We hiked all over Telasicia and the paths are very few and far between but that didn’t stop us intrepid explorers, we just went off road!! We all had the war wounds to prove it!! Kornati was beautiful and the snorkelling there was really good but you could just sail through the islands without paying, as long as you didn’t stop. We spent one night there and went out to a very nice restaurant to eat and we also watched the Croatia/France final there.

The Bare Karst	Taking a break in the olive groves

All too soon it was time for us to be back in Rogogniza to drop Caroline & Richard off, catchup on chores again and head to Pula ready for my son and girlfriend coming out on 2nd August. We spent a few days on Ist as the winds were all in the wrong direction. So we managed to get a hike in to a little church on top of a hill. Why do they always build churches so high up!! It was worth the climb though as the views were amazing. Next stop was Veruda, where we anchored waiting to go around into Pula harbour. The sunsets here were beautiful, very busy with day boats but quiet in the evening.

Ist	Sunset and Prosecco, perfect

Now in Pula Harbour waiting for Joe & Heather. I am still trying to keep up with my Yoga but it gets a bit challenging in this heat, my downward dog looks very floppy some days!! When passing pedalos and day boats stop to watch as well it can also be very off putting!! I will keep at it though.

     

Well Sue makes it all sound like sunshine and roses but it is not always like that – there is always maintenance to do and repairs to things that break, so what has gone wrong lately?

Our anchor windlass has a nice controller that counts the amount of chain we let out so it is really easy for Sue to get the right length of chain – the counting is done by a little magnetic switch that counts the number of turns of the gypsy (chain wheel). It all works very well until it is dark and windy and we need to re-anchor and the counting system decides to fail!! Now this might not be such a big deal if the windlass would just carry on working even if it is not counting but some designer decided it would be better if the lack of counting caused an error and stopped the controller working – not the brightest idea to my mind. Anyway once we had worked out why the windlass kept stopping we could just use the buttons on the helm that are independent of the counter and we could get the anchor up and get re-anchored. These things always happen in the middle of the night.

So next day I had to remove the windlass to get to the magnetic switch to find one of the wires broken, some filing, soldering and heatshrink tubing got it all fixed and ready to go back in place. Only about 4 hrs work to repair the fault.

Next one of our alternators decided to stop charging so had to take it off the engine, strip it down and check it over with the test meter. Found the problem to be a failed diode but luckily we had a spare diode plate in the stores so some more soldering meant we had a working alternator again and this time only a couple of hours work!!

Then our port engine decided to start making some strange noises – turn it off and use the other engine until we get to a good anchorage for some investigation. After taking lots of bits off the engine I finally find the problem to be a failed head gasket, didn’t have one in the stores so had to make a temporary repair with some kitchen foil so I could put it all back together and at least have the engine working for emergency use while we waited to get a new gasket. Fortunately Joe was able to bring a gasket kit with him and after stripping the engine again and putting in the new gasket we now have a happy engine again. This little bit of fun meant two engine strip downs and rebuilds at around 5 hrs each time.

Probably had a good few other minor things to deal with along the way but maybe you can see that it can be a bit of challenge keeping everything working 100%. You can blame Sue for the lack of pictures of all this work, Chris was a bit too busy with the spanners to hold the camera as well.