The idea to make this journey was born last summer when Slobodan went to a seven-day-cruising with Sreta, Mirko and Ares. Then he tried all he had dreamt about, and for which he had taken so many actions to make it work. Tonči and I were hoping quietly all that time, that idea would come true for mutual satisfaction. For a few last years this sailing has really been one of our greatest passions and we simply fluttered with a thought that we would experience it at last. We didn’t talk much about it, because it seemed too beautiful to be true, as people usually say. But, in the middle of August of the year of 1996 four enthusiasts set off from the quay and entered into a direct contact with the object of their dreams.
The sixteenth day of August was the one preceded by preparations of food, clothes and all other equipment a sailor has to take with him (guitar, axe, camera, lip-cream etc.). There were some papers that should have been a sailing diary, and from the notes of which I find the thoughts, having flown through my head those days. What preceded was a strong storm with frightening rain, threatening that one dream of a year’s nights would become a year of disappointment. The following day, with our first look through the lashes, proved that there was no place for fear.
Hit the road
The following day the brand new sea welcomed us. Atmosphere is full of clearness, visibility to the edge of stratosphere, our ship allowable full, so that we set off full of optimism. A rope that fell over the propeller while we were untying, made us a bit slower, but Slobodan and his mask solved that, without being disturbed by the morning coldness of the Cetina. When he took his mask off, it was that old Slobodan again, on whose experience and help we counted.
We took a direction to Pučišće on the island of Brač and were sliding easily towards it using the motor. There we started wakening completely and it was getting clearer and clearer that it had started and that there was no way back. On that part of the journey we were watching where we were sailing, and then we were organising our staff to get a better place for them, so that they do not disturb us. There the stories, having been read many times, come out from the memory immediately, saying that it is really tight on the ship and that every millimetre of the space saved is really precious. It is not a house, that has a cellar for drinks, pantry for cakes or room to sleep in, but everything should be pulled in holes which are everywhere, and you should place yourself in one of them, if you want to have a nap. Later some people, who had seen much more ships in their life than we had, told us that the space in our ship was used very well and that we could dance of joy on it. Still, we did not spend those first hours inside, but we were picking with our eyes everything we could, and there was always more and more of it. A view to the mountains above Omiš with a reflection of the low eastern sun might not mean much to somebody else, but we really have the luck to be able to enjoy in these things and only we know, what those who cannot, are missing.
I had spent the whole summer ashore and I had been repeating all the time that I was missing being aboard, if only for a moment, and now all this. I will try to describe what “all this „ means. Beautiful scenes for taking photographs were coming one after another. We caught some of them with our camera, and drank the rest with our eyes and our hearts, that were getting bigger and bigger. I got bare foot to make the contact purer, and the sun-glasses change the picture of the world and all that richness of colours, which actually exist, can lose something of their authenticity under them, so I take them off, too.
Suddenly the first gusts of landward breeze pull us and remind us that we are here because of sailing. Then we sit down and divide tasks we should do when we turn the motors off and let the wind pull us. Slobodan and Tonči are leaders here, because they have certain experience in studying these things. Every now and then we measured the wind speed with a manual gauge. Here, at the exit from the port of Pučišće, indicator needle showed force 4 of the wind. From the recommendations, we knew that it was most beautiful to sail at wind force of 4-5 Beaufor, and later we realised that it was perhaps too mild a wind for proper enjoyment. When it was time to have lunch, which is never to be missed by a real sailor, we were close to the small bay Rasotica on the east of the island of Brač and we sailed in, to have lunch.
Two hours from Omiš
So, lusty and refreshed, did we sail towards the landward breeze. Our aim was to reach Bol by the evening. On that section of journey we experienced a direct contact with the wind and some situations having been new to us. We were sailing with the wind and we had to tack all the time, so we practised that procedure a lot. When the flag on the last wire cable waves vertically to the boom, it means we are set well and we catch a good angle for sailing with the wind. Every following flying over was done more fluently and it seemed that we were pulling all the strings, that is to say all the ropes. Though the motor was off, we were sometimes pulled by the wind so strongly, that the propeller started to move on its own and its rotation and the sound it was producing while so, was a proof of a certain speed. The sailing boat was pitching more and more, and we with it. Now we were far from everything stable, a feeling that you really belong to another world, whose first name and family name is dynamics, started to appear. And again I am returning to the fact that I was longing to do something concrete to change environment a bit, and there while I was sitting on the side of the leaned sailing boat and absorbing every wave breaking on it, was a part of its destruction, all that was a filter to melancholic sun beams and then I realized that the scene was so indescribable and actually this is what attracts its abstractness in it. Such an environment brought tears to my eyes a few times, tears of joy. Perception we were used to before, happened through the eye, ear or nose, and now we were cast into a place which you experience with your whole body, your body softens and everything becomes a big sponge-like soul. All those drops sliding under our skin in that way, simply become protective bodies and increase resistance to nerve moments, which now seem so dreadfully far away and impossible. It is incredible that we have found and experienced something that sophisticated, only a few hours far from Omiš, where have spent all our life.
Troubles in paradise
That manual Beaufor gauge was directed to the air all the time and it kept showing about 6 and a half for the last half an hour. I was the main Beaufor measurer and suddenly the device in my hand trembled, because blowing increased to the full 7 and a half. There we leaned most, something about 25o. It was nice to be a part of that imaginary complex of resistible hull and irresistible sea, stretched sails and caps scattered around. When Tonči cried that a jib had been thorn, we got aware that some time ago, we had heard that it had not been so strained, but its edge had been flapping out of plan. Such wounds soon become painful for the ship and we had to react quickly. Not having time for prayers, dripping wet, we agreed about the tactics in two words, yelling, and took the agreed positions. We had to put down the jib not to be thorn even more. The following scene showed Slobodan keeping the rudder tight in his hand, Mirko was enjoying an operation in one of relatively sure corners of the sailing boat, I was loosing the ropes, and Tonči put himself on the most beautiful and the most dangerous place, on the bow, which was completely dipped in the sea in one moment and in another one it was high above that same sea, to 4 metres above it. The bow makes the highest amplitudes. In that up-and-down movement, repeating for hundred times, he found strength and managed to put the exhausted sail down. But, when he tried to tie it on the fence of the bow, he saw there was not enough rope to tie it firmly, and then there was my turn. From one of the holes, Slobodan who was steering safely and masterfully all the time, handed me a few spare ropes. I put them among my teeth and went towards Tonči, bow and the exhausted sail, taking the shortest way. There we fastened the sail to the fence successfully and then, creeping slowly and helping each other, returned to the cockpit. In the safety of the cockpit there were a lot of “give-me-fives”.
We started thinking about if we had been able to do something to avoid the jib being thorn, but we took all responsibility away and explained the incident as caused by inexperienced estimation of wind force and badly sewed sail. Thought by that direct experience, we decided to shorten the main sail immediately, to avoid happening something to it. So, with the shortened mail sail, against the frontal landward breeze of 7 Beaufors, we were going on very slowly and then realized that our planned aim, Bol, would not be reached that evening. We turned the motor on, but we were still going on very slowly. While we were sailing towards Brač, exactly in front of us, through the shade of the former waves, a peaceful bay appeared and proved itself to be our first shelter for the night.
If we can trust nautical charts we had, the bay was called Konjska. I do not know how they knew we would come by. We fastened the sailing boat from all the four sides and poor it could not make a move. We took the thorn sail to the beach to let it dry, so that we do not put it away while still humid. In all those tying operations, a rubber boat we were taking with us, helped a lot. As it was getting darker and darker, all day light was pouring slowly into a paraffin lamp, hanging on the boom. That paraffin lamp soon became the only spark in the flood of darkness. Its only competition were lights from the island of Hvar, but without much effect. Dried, fed and anchored, we were full of positive energy. We were retelling our experience again and again and could not find words to describe something like that properly. Then Tonči started playing the guitar, and I started singing, and Slobodan and Mirko were lying on the bow, putting their hands on the ears. There were so many stars as on sales, and the Milky way was spread casually, exactly above us. Let that picture remain in your memory, because we were seen off in the kingdom of dreams with it.
A spotless day
The following morning we wriggled out from the Konjska bay about 9 o’clock and sett off to Bol on the calm sea. Slobodan knew that Bol did not have a very good port for us to land, so we did not put the air out of our rubber boat and take it away, but we were pulling it, because we knew we would need it. I remained in it and was pulled to Bol. Sound effects were even more expressed, because I was far from the motor, with my head so close to the sea. I had heard and seen a lot about Bol before, so I was interested to know how it all looked like in nature.
We approached it from the east and it is interesting to see how, in a light arch, from the mountain Vidova gora a contour of the island goes down to the tip of the beach Zlatni rat. In the port itself, there was no place to land, of course, so we went on to Zlatni rat, where about ten ships had already been anchored. We stopped exactly in front of the hotel Bretanida. All the ships were placed with their front towards the east, but we thought that landward breeze would soon start blowing, so we placed our ship to the west and in an hour all other yachts had to make a turning move, and we had already been placed well. We are the men.
At Bol unbelievably many people. It was interesting that on these yachts in our neighbourhood almost everybody was completely naked. People come somewhere where nobody knows them, they are in the constant contact with the nature and they feel tied up with clothes and they simply take them off and then it is a real holiday when you do not have to think what other people will think.
Tonči and I went to town on our rubber boat to fetch some fuel, bread and to see where we could find some water to complete ship supplies. It was pleasant to walk on the path leading from Bretanida to the town and to meet all those different, new people, but I did not like the path being paved with stone that is pretty slippery and probably dangerous when it rains. The town itself is nice, but rather typical. While we were coming back, we had a look at the hotel and witnessed that those who said that it was just “like for Romeo and Juliet” were right. We especially liked the colour of the pool. After that we had lunch on the ship, and as our aim that day was a bay before Starigrad on the island of Hvar, where Slobodan had been last year, and it was two o’clock, we did not stay longer to go swimming as we had planned to before, but set off at once. Sailing in a parallel line with the famous beach, I stood on the very tip of the front, holding the jib wire rope. At one moment Slobodan made a sudden move to the right to avoid one of about ten surfers who had come too close to us, and I did not expect this and I leaned a lot over the front, and already saw myself in the sea, and I do not know how I managed to hold the fence and somehow roll to the deck.
There we put the main sail up and a storm jib we had on stock, and everything else is a legend. We had the ideal wind of 5 Beaufors that was constant, excellent visibility, strong right fist and equally strong left fist. Ropes were obedient, the sails as well. We did seven over-flights, sailing to Hvar some hundred metres far from the coast, then to Brač to the same distance. We caught such a direction with the last over-flight that we affected exactly the cape at the entrance to the bay of Starigrad and then down the wind, with sails “butterfly-like”, came to a small bay, where we had planned to come. It was about 6 o’clock. We seemed to have learnt those basic moves on that section and we were pretty satisfied. A man is happy like a small child here, he is not burdened with anything and everything beautiful that happens to him meets no counter force, he has to oppose, but all his heart is reserved for the beauty. When the sail goes down , and there is still wind in the air, you sit on the front and you put the limped sailcloth together and you twist in them for a moment and get lost, and if you have ever wanted to be among the clouds, it is a similar feeling.
In the bay that welcomed us that evening, we repeated it all from the previous evening. Even the sky was in a similar mood. We were a bit sad, as we were coming back the following day.
The end of the circle
Slobodan started the day diving for fish, but said, the bay was completely dead. It must be very suitable for anchoring and a lot of boats come there, and then leave, thinking that nobody will ever anchor there, so they throw things in the sea. We dropped around to Starigrad to fetch bread and water again and there we saw a lot of beautiful big yachts and sailing boats.
When we set off from Starigrad about ten o’clock, there was no wind yet and we were going on, using only motor almost to the cape where we were yesterday and then northern wind started to blow.
It is not very safe to sail in north wind. You take your place and the sails are full, and then it suddenly changes its direction for 180o, and there you are. We were fighting it till lunchtime, and some sailing boats left us behind several times; they had 4-5 times more sails than we did, they were operated by only one man, naked, from the cockpit, using buttons. It seemed as if they had spent all the cloth for sails and nothing had left for the clothes.
At about one o’clock we reached a bay on the eastern side of Šolta. We could have landed on Brač too, but we wanted to count one island more on this route. Later we were proud of that decision, because the sea was so crystal clean in that bay, that we were amazed. Its colour reminded us on the pool at Bretanida, and the bottom is sandy and coral on spots. What a difference from a bay from the previous evening. We went swimming there, had lunch and very soon set off again.
While we were getting further and further from Šolta, and after we had already had several landings in different types of ports, and as almost every time a port saved us from some troubles, I remembered Columbus and his St Saviour and cried that each bay should have the name of St Saviour as a subtitle.
Before the entrance Splitska vrata we put the main sail down, because Slobodan and Tonči felt that the northern wind was even stronger there, so we did it here, not to have to put it down there. We reached the tip of Brač fast and our souls fluttered when we saw Omiš. It was half cloudy, and a little sun was shining on our home port. The northern wind was really stronger and the speed gauge was constantly showing 7 Beaufors, and there were moments when it showed 8. So, we took a direction only with the jib and motor. The wind was globally coming from exactly such a direction, that sailing maximally with it, we were going exactly to Omiš.
Somewhere in the middle of the channel the northern wind started to stagnate a bit, and we could put the main sail up. We were accompanied by shoal of Atlantic bonitos. As there were no bigger movements, we could relax. There was more and more sun, and the sun after the northern wind is extremely strong and the skin really hurts under it. It is nice to lie by the rudder, to dip your hand in the sea and with a little sea water on your palm, to let your face be refreshed too. Your fingers, stretched and pointed to the bottom, are not aware above what an abyss they are, and scratching only on the surface of something as powerful as the sea, they have opened a window in another world, which we do not see, because the sea generally reflects the picture of our world. There are a lot of secrets, but these mysteries are exactly that what attracts us, little people, in such adventures.
As we were getting closer to Omiš, the wind was getting weaker and weaker, so we were watching the surface and looking for rippled parts and were then going towards them, trying to catch a few more gusts. We managed to catch a good wind for several times, and some gusts leaned us to 30o. The sea was very slippery. The picture of the entrance Omiška vrata was getting clearer and clearer. As we were on Šolta, Slobodan said we would come to Omiš at half past six and we arrived precisely at that time.
In the local waters, so familiar to us, we made a few movements, illuminated with the low golden red western sun. Five honorary circles for imaginary spectators., and then quickly into the river, to take the ship and the amusement to the end of the circle.
Northern wind before the calm
At the very mouth we saw Sreta with Ares in the distance and hands were high up, and then we turned to the berth. First we saw that somebody was intruding in the berth on the quay, where this sailing boat usually stands, and Slobodan’s small boat as well. We arranged it somehow. That put us to the ground and showed that the weekend and the holiday were over. While we were taking our things out of the ship and putting them in the car, we were telling our friends and acquaintances, who were there, about our first impressions, the sky was greeting us with strong contrasts and clouds with sharp edges; that border is very sharp on the ground, because only a few minutes ago we were on the sea, and now swinging in the head and lots of impressions have left and tomorrow is a new working day. It seems there was a strong northern wind of experiences before a very long calm.
When we were walking along the quay and pier and saw foreign ships landing, and admired their shape, I always had a feeling that they came from nowhere and were leaving to nowhere. Now I know how they feel and what they are experiencing, I know that they are looking for water in Omiš and that they would like to find some fresh bread. I know that they will be observing our faces with interest and later talk about them to their friends. All those places where we were, are beautiful, but Omiš seems to leave a good impression to the people who only have a glance at it from a sea vista and the aspect of a man, looking only for a safe port in it.
We came home and had a laugh while we were telling our dearest what had been happening to us. We could not picture them the real atmosphere, because these things are not available to words.
That evening I had a shower for the first time after three days and put four layers of salt away. That evening I looked myself in the face for the first time in three days. It was covered with stubble, skin stretched, but from the corners of the eyes a light was coming out. It might have been a reflection of the neon lamp, or it might have a been an echo, left behind, of some paraffin lamps from not so long ago, which found a way from the depth of remembering and swam to the eye and modestly reminded me of itself and of many pictures sleeping beside it, in us, and healing us with their power.
