12 -19 August 2009***The promenade at Split with everyone out for their evening stroll***Roman centurions during the reenactment of the Roman invasion of Split*** We had seen this contraption earlier in the day and had tried to work out what it was - ancient merry go round with the children in baskets having great fun***Contemplating life at the Split fruit and veg daily market***
As we started our journey south back down the coast we were still experiencing a period of very settled weather, clear sunny days with temperatures in the high 20's with low 20's at night, light winds and flat seas and only sometimes an afternoon seabreeze. Mark works very hard at trimming the sails and we manage to sail nearly all the time if at all possible. This really is my kind of sailing, with the apparent wind rarely going over 15 knots, and except for the wakes we generally have flat water. We headed back to Rogoznica, and as there were no strong winds forecast we anchored much closer to the town. We stayed 2 nights, the first night we were joined by 3 other yachts, the second around 20. Plenty of room for all and a good stopover point.
Nibbling away at the miles we kept moving every couple of days. We had a great sail in a rare seabreeze from behind and changed our intended anchorage for the night as the westerly was coming right into it and turned and headed up into a large shallow bay (in Croatia if its under 20 metres we call it shallow!) called Marina. It was a beautiful spot, only one other yacht, calm and peaceful.
The following morning we were joined by Gone with the Wind again, they have been having ongoing problems with their anchor windlass jamming and it was in need of urgent repairs. Only problem was in order to do this they had to remove the anchor from the chain and bring all the chain in, not such an easy feat if you are not in a Marina. So they came up alongside us and rafted to us for the day while Liam, Mark and friend Pete set about doing what blokes to best, pondering for hours on the best way to fix it and after much deliberation actually fix it. Task complete they put it all back together and anchored for the night, testing the new improvements.
Next day we both moved on to Split. You are permitted to anchor within Split harbour as long
as you keep clear of all the ferry docks and marina entrance. This is somewhere you wouldn't actually mind paying as you are right downtown with great access, but they don't charge, go figure!!! We spent two nights there and very much enjoyed it. It was Roman festival week, with street theatre, ancient stalls - a cobbler showing the making of original roman leather sandals, a potter busy at work on his wheel, basket weaving and a variety of others, all the people dressed in toga's looking the part. There was an evening of Roman theatre set inside the ancient palace walls, with everyone dressed looking the part, while on the promenade there were stages set with opera concerts. Split was buzzing.The walled towns in Croatia just continue to amaze us, no two are the same. What I liked most about Split was its state of disrepair. During the day it really did look dilapidated, some buildings tumbling down, it was like a big outdoor movie set of ancient ruins, but it is a working and living town. At night it takes on a whole new image, with well thought out and placed lighting that gives it a mystical glow, it really is lovely. The harbour is pretty smelly though, but if you can cope with that then its an excellent stopover with a secure, free anchorage on the doorstep. Add to that the excellent daily market, closeby supermarket, pizzerias and gelatos stalls - it shouldn't be missed.
As much as we were enjoying Split it was time to move on, we headed south east to the southern side of Brac and the little anchorage of Lucice. It was crowded already with yachts on moorings but both Balvenie and
GWTW managed to squeeze into a shallow patch we found and had a comfortable enough night.A couple of adjustments were needed to the recent improvement on GWTW's anchor windlass so they rafted back up in the morning for a couple of hours for more work to be completed. Then we had a good sail again with light winds to the next island of Hvar. We planned to anchor a couple of miles away from the main town and try to bus in to visit. This was the place on our way north that looked to be totally crazy with bumper to bumper boats so we thought best to give the main anchorage a miss. As we closed in on it though, it didn't look too bad so we took a little detour in, had a snoop around, found reasonable depths to anchor in a good spot so dropped anchor and settled in.
The early evenings entertainment was supplied by an entourage of charter boats coming in to anchor, there is so much to say about their anchoring antics that I shall dedicate a separate blog update to it when I have everything else up to date!!
More on Hvar in the next update
Cruising info for Rogoznica, Marina, Split, Lucice on Brac and Hvar Town - Croatia:
Anchorages -
Rogoznica ... 43 31.850N 15 58.322E 16.5m sand with patches of weed
Marina ... 43 30.897N 16 07.221E 14m sand
Split ... 43 30.324N 16 26.031E 6m sand
Lucice ... 43 18.352N 16 27.142E 9.5m sand and rock. Not ideal but ok
Hvar Town ... 43 10.153N 16 26.312E 18m maybe sand? Lots of wash from passing craft but calm down after midnight for a few hours!
Internet - Rogoznica, Marina both unlocked. Split have a drink ashore and get a code, Lucice has none, Hvar take laptop ashore to wifi cafe
Money and Provisions - Lucice nothing ashore, all the others have everything. Fuel dock in Split with easy access (we didn't tie up, just jerry jugged) - Diesel 6.67kuna per litre, Petrol 7.44kuna per litre
