The BIG day

Arise at 5am full of anticipation.  We head off to Primosten for our favourite breakfast and enjoy the view and people watching.

Primosten



Cafe Dora



Once back on the boat we raise the main sail to check it out.  It looks to be in a good condition, as it was replaced in 2008 along with the head sail. We then raise the head sail.  The sheets are not very long and we wonder if they are actually be long enough to tack with, but yes all good there.  The sail is in good condition.  These charter boats are really designed to make sailing easy.

Leo picks us up at 10am as we are off to the harbour masters office to DE flag the yacht and change the name and registration to an Australian boat.  We pay for our vignette, or cruising permit for Croatian waters and that’s it!  All up the process costs us 2,400 Kuna's.  We finally have done it, the boat is Australian registered to us called Moet22.

Ivan then drops by in his lunch break to brief Greg on the boat as Ivan has been responsible for most of the work done over the last few months.  He replaces and connects the gas bottles with new ones, now I can heat and froth the milk for our morning coffees, yeh!!!

We had new thick cockpit cushions made and had a 2000watt invertor installed, this will allow us to use electrical appliances when not hooked up to shore power.  The boat was hauled and cleaned and antifouled plus all issues identified in the survey were rectified.  Engine is serviced and still looks pretty new.  We are really happy with what Ivan has done.

We still have the dilemma about the tender.  Looks like no chance of getting one locally and we also need to buy 20mtes of anchor chain as we only have 40 mtres on at the moment.  Ivan suggests a few places in Sibenyak so we head off for a road trip, it’s only about 30 mins nth of where we are.

It’s already been a long day as we find the way to the first shopping centre.  Greg is delusional by now due to jet lag and lack of food as he suggests we purchase some throw cushions for the cockpit and saloon lounge.  Gee was I hearing right?  He even chooses the colours, now that’s what you call good training girls.  We buy a few other goodies including a new radio and then head over to a hardware place where we are hoping to get the anchor chain.  No luck there with that but they do sell tenders and have one just the perfect design and size for us.  It’s about $1000 Aussie, more than our originally budget but we have no choice.  It has a hard aluminium bottom and can take up to four persons so perfect.  We’ve decided that this trip we will row or paddle to shore which will be good exercise and a bit of fun.

Its 3pm and we are really dead now, we need food and fast as we have only had a small bottle of water since breakfast hours ago.  Greg knows of a restaurant that we passed on the way to Sibenyak so we make for that.  It’s called Hans and specialises  in the slow cooked pork and lamb which we try, yep you guessed it, it’s great.  We get to take a breath for 30 mins and enjoy this time.

Tired Greg

Back at the marina we keep ticking off items on our to do lists.  Greg drops the anchor to check it and looks good.  I’m busy below deciding what to stow and where.  We do have plenty of storage room which is great.  We keep wondering what the BUT is with this yacht as it’s too good to be true.  We are really so lucky to have picked this one up when we did.  The only slight issue we have is with the floor in the ensuite head.  It seems spongy and has a crack along one side.  We have already decided not to use it as we have two others until we can find out if it can be repaired or we might put a wooden rack floor on top of what there is already.

We are buggered but keep going, next up is putting the tender together, it's like an Ikea product.  The instructions are only in Croatian and the diagrams are of really poor quality so we have fun with this.  Somehow it finally all clicks into place and Walla, we have a tender.  It’s a great size and will be very stable.  Hoisting it up on the deck is another story but we manage to get this done and Greg ties it off where we will leave it until we head off.

We are absolutely buggered now and have not stopped all day since 5am. It’s  now about 9pm so take a shower and grab a lite snack at the marina restaron.  Can't wait for my zzz’s tonight.