Our First Days using "Dry Butt"

As of the 13th of August we have moved back onto the Beneteau we bought and are still waiting for to be officially exported. We are going to rename her 'Tara' -- the first boat I owned and met Marina on was Scarlet(t) -- when we sold Scarlet for the powerboat we named it Rhett. We had always talked that if we bought a cruising boat we'd need to name it "Tara". Until we own the boat its name is Eridanus -- a constellation and also the river Po formed when Phaeton took his father's sky chariot out for a ride ... unfortunately he crashed it and Zeus killed him with a lightning bolt .... creating the constellation and the river at the same time. Anyway .... we prefer to call it "Dry Butt" which is our nickname for Erid (arid) anus (do I need to explain that one?) instead of Tara until we can officially rename her ... a ceremony that will be documented on the blogsite.

We’re trying to be the squeaky wheel and get the boat exported. So far we’ve had a great summer but the time is coming that we need to move on. We’ve become friends with Marcel and Yalena – who bought a 47 footer and experienced the exact same difficulties. They’ve been providing encouragement and advice to us and that’s been really valuable. Marcel is a recently retired oil-man from Holland who has lived all over the world including Calgary. He has a couple of kids and he his 14 year old boy Joost (rhymes with Toast as he says) was with him for the last couple of weeks.

We went out on a couple of day-sails and took Joost with us. He tried the swim behind the boat on the rope trick and we ended up going too fast and he fell off. Ross jumped in to keep him company and we circled the boat and picked them up. It is ridiculous how much pressure 3-4 knots of boat speed has in terms of trying to drown you. It’s a lot like being towed by a waterski boat – if you hold on you become a ‘bubble-head’ – it looks cool but difficult to breathe.

We decided to take Eridanus / Tara out for some overnights and thought we’d meet up with Marcel, Yalena and Joost on the island of Solta. We didn’t get out of Kremik until 4pm on Thursday night and we powered hard to get there right at dusk. We found them, dropped our anchor beside them and then rafted the boats together. This was the first time we had anchored with Tara and the size of the anchor tackle on the boat is impressive. The chain links are 12.5 mm wide – and we have 70meters of chain. We were wondering why the boat is so bow down – might be because we have a Volkswagen in the anchor locker!

The next day we tried to fill up with diesel fuel in Milna --- and got involved in one of the European queues. What a freaking gong-show. 4 boats ahead of us then another 5 join in, everyone jockeying for position, people cutting in … and all this for a few litres of fuel. We decided to bag it, pulled into the dock and sent a runner (me) with a jerry can and got 20 litres of diesel fuel and left. Life could be so much easier and faster if people followed the rules from time-to-time (though I myself am a notorious rule breaker with the exception of queuing).

Jessie went ashore and took a picture of Marina and me on Eridanus (Tara) that is the first portrait that we have.

The next several hours we beat up the Solta coast in 15-20 knots of breeze and had a great time. Racing other boats all the way -- they all withdrew and put their motors on once they realized they didn’t have a chance (hahahahahah)– finally arriving in a small harbour at the western tip of Solta. While most of Croatia could use a dose of Service training, this was the exception. The guy came out and said “free mooring if you come to the restaurant tonight” – he pulled up some laid moorings (our boat was too big for the mooring ball – ha ha ha, never had that happen before) and we tied up on the shore. Jessie was really excited because we were meeting up with some people from Britain that had two girls 11 and 9. Marcel came in beside us and the party was on. Richard, Fiona, Rose and Lottie (Charlotte) and Marcel, Yalena, Jost and our motley crew went out to a great dinner. After copious beer, great stories by Richard who was a fighter pilot in the RAF and taking on the lead for the acceptance testing of the Eurofighter – followed by Grappa (aka rocket-fuel) the night was over. Jessie had clicked with the girls and went for a sleepover (are we being good parents ?!? .. we barely know them ….) but Jessie returned safe and sound the next day and we had their two girls for the entire day and night … so new friends made.


Late that day (1300) we decided to head to the Island of Brac – and find an anchorage. We had all the kids and sailed downwind most of the way. At the end the kids wanted to do the “rope game” so we slowed down and went in the last of the 3 boats. We anchored between Tomskii Kastan and Head First in this anchorage …. And the rest of the night we were in the ‘washing machine’ and had a very fitful night as the boats were rocking and rolling in the waves.


On Sunday morning we all parted ways – Tomskii was heading for Split, the Head First group were off to Korcula and we decided to go back to Kremik – and finish some unfinished business. We left early (8am) because we had to get back to Kremik and ask our contact what’s up because he had some ‘splainin’ to do. We had a great sail downwind – the clouds were nuts – why are they so strangely coloured??? Turns out that there was a huge fire in Split, burned up and over the top of the mountain and there were water bombers doing about 5 minute circuits filling up with water and dumping them on the wild fire. We sailed as much as we could, did some powering had a really relaxing 25 mile journey and arrived at Kremik in the late afternoon on Sunday.