Motorways, Marble and Mouth-ache

Mouth-ache ? What? Don’t worry, all will become clear.

Departure day finally arrived. Rarely has a holiday been less eagerly anticipated, I suspect. However, we packed the car and set off for Salzburg. One thing was certain, it wasn’t ballast that would be lacking. Whyever do we imagine that so much stuff is necessary? We always have several times as much luggage as anyone else. Most participants of this flotilla holiday would arrive by charter flight with a 20kg baggage allowance. We probably had close to 100kg between us. We work on the principle that if there is room to spare in the car we have obviously forgotten something. As the cars get bigger, over the years, so do the mountains of kit.

If you’re looking for a rant about German motorways you clearly haven’t been reading my blog for long. Regular reader(s) will appreciate my restraint on this occasion. The roadworks even provided an amusing interlude. The satnav advised us to leave the Autobahn, and we ended up eating our lunch in a forest picnic area. We shared a table with a couple who clearly worked together. After eating quickly, they grinned sheepishly, bid us Guten Tag and scuttled off into the undergrowth together. Germans, eh? Always taking their clothes off at the drop of a pair of Lederhosen. (The Skipper thought I was imagining things, but he has led a sheltered life.)

It’s always a little frustrating to stay somewhere for just one night. For precisely that reason, I had booked a hotel right in the centre of Salzburg. Despite arriving later than anticipated, we had time for a stroll round the pretty bit and found a traditional-style restaurant where we had a very good dinner.

The next day, we didn’t really know how long it would take to get to Rovinj as the satnav data disk didn’t extend to Croatia, but we decided to make a detour to have a look at Ljubljana. That turned out to be an excellent idea. The old part of the town was undergoing major renovations, (reminding me of Bratislava many years earlier, where I used to stand at the tram stop, a little tipsy, watching workmen carefully laying cobbles well into the night) but is very charming. We ate at a rather tourist-trappy “traditional Slovenian” restaurant, but the food was fine.

Ljubljana; Caption competition

Thrown back on our (=my) traditional map-reading skills, we managed to locate Croatia without undue difficulty.  It seemed strange, though, to queue for border controls and have to CHANGE MONEY! Journey back in time! (Oh, sorry, some of you may not yet have joined the euro.)

Our hotel in Rovinj was in the Yugotours mould, but had been reasonably-well smartened up, and was right on the seafront, with a large pool. We had an aperitif at a waterfront bar, watching the sunset.

The next day, I had a slight twinge of toothache at breakfast, but thought no more of it. We set out to explore. The old town is just lovely. It’s one of those fortified coastal towns from the holiday ads. We wandered up and down the narrow streets, and bought a beautiful Dalmatian marble “desk set” which we consider to be far better suited to its new role accommodating soap and toothbrushes.  In the afternoon, we relaxed by the pool. I didn’t know it then, of course, but this was to be the last time I was to wear a swimming costume on holiday (as opposed to in the garden at home) for four years, and counting…

Rovinj

View from Rovinj

Later that night, the tooth started to get really troublesome, and the following morning it was clear Something Must Be Done. It was, of course, Saturday, and we had to be at Kremik to pick up the boat later that day. The hotel receptionist was not overly helpful, but directed us to a clinic in town. After wandering up and down stairs and opening unmarked doors, I eventually located a dentist and nurse sitting chatting over a coffee. After brief negotiations, we agreed to communicate in Italian, and she quickly diagnosed an abscess and prescribed ampicillin. While writing the prescription, the nurse asked, “E gravida?” Why ask me if it’s serious, I thought, then remembered it’s Italian for pregnant. At my age?! Anyway, armed with penicillin and painkillers, we set off for Kremik.

I may be doing it an injustice, but my experience is that inland Croatia is not very exciting. The motorway winds through damp and misty woods and farmland for hour after hour. There are, I’m told pretty lakes to visit, but we didn’t have time. I drove for hours to keep my mind off the Tooth, and eventually we dropped down to the coast and passed through a series of slightly scruffy holiday villages to Kremik. I had been in such pain all day that any nervousness about the boat had been banished, so it was with great bravado that I swanned up to the Sunsail office and announced our arrival. “Your boat is Fandan II”, the girl told us, “down this pontoon, on the right”.  “Great, thanks,” I grinned. I’m sure she was convinced.

The marina boasted a decent enough restaurant, and the Tooth was placated with a bottle of Macedonian cabernet sauvignon, which was really not bad. I threw myself onto the forepeak bunk and fell instantly into the best sleep I had had for weeks. Antibiotics + paracetamol + alcohol + exhaustion = zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

One Giant Leap

To keep us amused over the winter, we’re going to take a little cruise back in time. Whilst the Skipper and I may have let slip one or two clues as to our inexperience when we were let loose on an unsuspecting Baltic with Das Drama in 2011, we had of course already learned some essential stuff, like what to call the pointy end, and where to store - sorry, stow - the gin.

To go back to the book of Genesis, in this case Edward’s Classe de Mer in 197*, would be to test your patience a little too far, I fear. Perhaps one day. For the moment, let’s take you back just a few years, to 2009…

We had learned to sail dinghies in Greece (and were pretty rubbish at it), Ed (for he cannot truthfully be called Skipper until he has actually done some skippering) had done some inshore racing, and we had been to an RYA school on La Gomera in the Canaries, where Ed had passed Day Skipper and I had been officially certified as Competent.

I expect there are plenty of sailors around who have bluffed their way to a bareboat charter with as much, and quite possibly less, experience, but such is not the Skipper’s way.

I was, at that time, far from convinced that I wanted to go sailing at all. The sum total of my yachting experience was that week in the Canaries, which I had not enjoyed: We took the three reefs out of the mainsail once, just to learn how to do it, and put them straight back in again, the food was dreadful, and it was cold. In the Canaries, in June. Perishing. All in all, not an experience likely to infect the novice with the sailing bug.

We had a problem. Ed was very clear that sailing had become a real passion for him. He wanted to get out on a boat as often as possible, and didn’t really want to spend his precious holiday doing anything else. I was too scared to sleep every time he went off cross-channel racing, and didn’t even want to hear about how it had gone. He nobly proposed that, if I really insisted, he would give it up. Fine. This way, please, for resentment, blame, guilt and all sorts of other vital ingredients for a happy relationship. I must at some point have reached a conscious decision, although my recollections are unclear, at least to TRY to share my Other Half’s abiding passion. Why should it be HIS hobby that determines how we spent our leisure time together?  Well it’s got to be somebody’s, and anyway, I didn’t really have a counter proposition.

So. Where to start? We knew something about flotilla holidays from our brief, although frequently spectacular (in the literal sense of providing a spectacle), dinghy days. Then, the “caravanners” were looked down upon. They wore proper clothes and never had wet hair. Older and wiser now, those factors had quietly migrated to the positives side. The Skipper did the research, (He’s the planning half of the team; ENTJ, if you’re interested) and decided upon Croatia. Beautiful scenery, warm weather, reachable by car, not too expensive, recognized holiday company, and there was another factor. Let me think. Ah, yes! Not tidal! Let’s keep it as simple as we can – a sound philosophy if ever there was one.

There wasn’t really a choice when it came to the boat. How big a Beneteau do you want? What’s the smallest you have? 32 ft .Done. The Skipper is always nervous about my reaction to the boat he’s chartered (and never more so than when we first set eyes on Das Drama, years later), but in fact he’s the one who values his creature comforts above almost all else. Actually, I quite like camping!

The flotilla week was booked some months in advance, and I was regularly nagged to brush up the stuff we had learned for our French boat licences, i.e. colregs, lights and marks etc. In short, all the fun bits designed to make sure you’re really looking forward to your, ahem, holiday. My department was to organize some overnight stops between Luxembourg and the flotilla’s home port of Kremik.

The plan that materialized was as follows: 1 night in Salzburg (pretty, spot of culture, dust off rusty German) and 2 nights in Rovinj, on the Istrian coast, (very pretty, pool, souvenir shopping) on the way down, and 3 nights at a winery near Verona (more culture than you could shake a stick at, unlimited Valpolicella) on the way back. I was genuinely looking forward to that bit. I figured if we got that far I would have earned it.

As the departure date grew near, I became increasingly fretful, to the point where I could barely sleep. I spent hours staring at the ceiling and planning how I was going to deal with my terror. The policy which emerged from these extended nocturnal cogitations was that I would just look dead cool, as if I’d been chartering yachts since I was knee-high to a seagull. The theory was that if I acted well enough to convince everyone else then I’d have to believe it myself. The soon-to-be-Skipper was naturally a little nervous himself, at the prospect of his first Command. Unusually for us, we kept our anxieties largely to ourselves, but I think that was just as well. It would hardly have helped to sit there over supper swapping apprehensions night after night.