A Day of Firsts

I missed out on our stopover in Dubrovnik, so I’m sorry I can’t share anything about it yet. I heard from all the McGanns that the Old City is amazing. We’ll be passing back through in September, though, so stay tuned…

Darragh, Cathy, Eve and Luke headed back to Dublin yesterday after a wonderful near couple of weeks with us. We’ll miss them, but I have a sneaking suspicion that they will be back. 😉

Conor and I are now on our own at sea and have a goal of arriving into the city of Split in 7 days when our kids are supposed to arrive. Yay! It will take us the week to get there with several days of relatively easy sailing/motoring. Our first stint was today. It involved:

• Our first fuel up
• Our first passage on our own
• Our first ball mooring (as in, no dock or marina to be had)
• Our first dinghy ride
• Our first use of our anchor light

Docking at the tiny fueling dock in our current marina was not pretty, but we managed it with some help. I still have to work on stepping on and off the boat to make this happen! But, we learned how to refuel and were on our way.

Another day of no wind, so another motor passage. We cruised through some beautiful, tiny Croatian islands to our destination island of Mljet. A visit to the bay and town of Luka Prožura was highly recommended by a fellow sailer we met in Porto Montenegro. It’s a beautiful, fairly secluded place with about 35 stone buildings surrounding the sea, and it’s full with a bit of life from families out in kayaks and SUPs. It seems a summer holiday spot.

In this cove, it’s all ball moorings, so we had our first go. Conor managed a beautiful self-made bridle, so we were quite pleased. Then a jump in the sea was more than called for. There was a beautiful school of fish that kept passing by our boat, so they were fun to see. 

According to our sailor friend, there’s a particular restaurant to visit in this tiny cove – Marijina Konoba. Conor swam ashore, searched around to find it, and reported back that someone would motor out to us shortly to show us the menu. Seemed a little unusual. Sure enough, Tony arrived to explain the menu to us. Turns out, their house special main courses take 2 hours to prepare, so you order ahead! 

When it was time for dinner, we gently moved into our dinghy and silently motored over to shore. Very cool! We had an amazing dinner at Marijina Konoba with a beautiful view, fabulous food, and excellent service. Now, I am not a ‘meat and potatoes’ kind of gal, but our dish of goat, potatoes and vegetables that had been prepared over hours literally fell off the bone and all had so much flavor. Best meat and potatoes ever! (I’m channeling my inner Luke.) Goat is apparently a specialty on this island, so we had to try it along with the goat cheese. Thank you, Germot, for the wonderful recommendation!

We walked back to our dinghy and were relieved to find it still there. Yay! We took our silent ride back to the dark Sabática. At dinner, Conor realized we hadn’t turned on the anchor light. Whoops. So back onboard, we got the light switched on and Conor felt much better. We also discovered that we actually have a deck light that illuminates the foredeck. Who knew?! 

We ended the night with some star gazing. I can’t remember the last time I saw that many stars. The Big Dipper was low in the sky, but there were so many others that I couldn’t make out any other constellations. It’s amazing how sound travels across water, so we could hear children still playing outside and cheerful gatherings taking place on land. All and all, a beautiful, peaceful place. We also decided that we’ll have to start studying up on astronomy!