Saturday 8/9 - Yesterday we
booked a boat for the day through Luka's company. We asked what hours we should plan to pick it up and bring it back and the answer to both questions was a good-natured shrug.
This is a place that truly understands the meaning of "Island Time" - perhaps even better than our home beach of South Padre Island.
We embarked 9ish and just putted around a bit. I read, Fred fished.
Around noon we pulled back into the harbor and picked up some supplies: lunch and a bottle of white. Found a nice little cove right about when the wind picked up up - as Luka assured us it does every day - at about 2 pm. While the boat was rocking and rolling we were comfy cozy - I was trying to burn off the cold I had picked up in Dubrovnik which fortunately does not seem to be so bad a one. I read. Fred painted and snoozed and before we knew it it was past 6 and the wind - again, just as Luka had promised - was laying down.
We paddled away from the rocky cove and then Fred pulled the string thingy. Nothing happened. He pulled it again. Still nada. A few more times with the same results. The waves were driving us back to the cove. He casually suggested I could row a bit if I just happened to feel like it. So I rowed and rowed and Fred pulled and pulled and eventually the motor decided to cooperate and that thing firing up was the sweetest sound let me tell you.
So we are merrily motoring home and we come across a little yellow inflatable just sort of drifting. In it are two boys - early teens perhaps. They are looking nervously around when they aren't whacking the tiny outboard with a flipflop. (This looks like a highly ineffectual method for making a broken engine run but what do I know?) We pull up next to them and see immediately what the problem is - the string thingy is extended all the way out with no tension to pull it back in. Even I can see that this is bad thing if you are wanting to go someplace. They are local boys - their knowledge of English surpasses ours of Croatian though not by much. After a quick lookover, Fred indicates that perhaps we should tow them in - an idea with which they enthusiastically concur. We ti them up, tow them all the way into the harbor and earn a happy and carefully enunciated "Thank you very much!" - like they had been practicing it all the way home.
The next day is spent primarily getting to the dock where we will pick up the ferry back to Ancona. In a way it is sad - this feels like the first part of the return trip home - but truly home is starting to sound like a wonderful option by now. It has been a very long journey and now Fred too is starting to come down with what I am now calling "The Croation Crud" and here we are with a big sand sculpture contest looming in the immediate future....
