Our escape.
01 October 2017 | Cairns, Queensland, Australia.
Annie and Cam "H"
I mentioned in the last blog post about escaping from the destruction, the loss, the stress and jumping off the hamster wheel. I also mentioned about flying to Croatia to have a look at several yachts.
Here is the story on how we purchased our Annecam.
Our flights took over thirty-one hours from Melbourne Australia to Split Croatia via Doha and Munich we did that without any stop-overs, it was one flight connecting with the next all the way, I can remember having less than six hours in total between flights, it was almost two whole days without any meaningful sleep when you add the time it took to get to Melbourne Airport from where we once lived. I should mention that this was only the second time that I had been out of Australia, the first time was a flight to the beautiful Fiji to be a tourist staying in a resort for ten days. Annie had been an international traveler for most of her life, Kara her daughter was born in Hong Kong.
We had arranged a hire car to use to get from the Split Airport to where we had to go. I will point out that I had never driven a car with the steering wheel on the wrong side before in my entire life, without much thought we jumped in and quickly found that we were sitting on the wrong side of the car as Annie said that she would not drive in a foreign country, what could possibly go wrong you might ask?
To start with, it took us four attempts to get out of the airport car park, the first three attempts we found ourselves in the wrong lane on the entry side of the road behind the boom gates, we needed the exit side and that should have been simple but every sign was written in Croatian. Note to oneself “learn to read and speak the local lingo before leaving home” but we didn’t and here we were trying to find our Hotel that I had pre-booked for our first night, we did not even have an in car gps to guide us. The streets were narrow after all there had been little change to the roads in this part of the world since early Roman time. We drove for what seemed like ages without success, we thought that we were hopelessly lost so we found a car park and were about to ask for directions when we noticed right across the street a sign with the name of our Hotel, talk about sheer luck and we thought that we were lost, we could have claimed that we knew exactly where we were going but we did not. After a big sigh of relief and a laugh, we were checked in for a much sought-after sleep.
The next morning, we woke up at what we thought was a reasonable time of the day only to find out that it was only 5am, something to do with our very unadjusted body clocks, that happens when traveling from the other side of the world, from a very different time zone and as breakfast was not available until 7.30am we showered and went for a walk. Talk about being blown away by what we had walked out into. Try to picture this, we had just come from a country with a European history that goes back about two hundred and fifty years and here we were walking on cobbled streets through, in and around buildings that go back well over two thousand five hundred years, we had no idea the city was founded as the Greek colony of Aspálathos in the 2nd or 3rd century BC, absolutely no idea until we experienced it firsthand that it was home to Diocletian's Palace, built for the Roman emperor of the day. We walked for what seemed like hours, past docks, along canals, through markets that had everything one could possibly poke a stick at and I’m sure it was then that Annie thought that she had died and gone to heaven, we purchase a t-shirt each with logos on the front that said, “Pirate of Croatia”, we still have those t-shirts and we were about to become real Pirates of Croatia.
After breakfast and checking out of our hotel we drove from Split to Sukosan along the beautiful Adriatic coast, past some of the Islands we would be sailing around, we drove through numerous villages and cities that neither of had a snowballs chance in hell of pronouncing their names at the time. On arrival we checked into the hotel that we had pre-booked for a week, it was just across the road from the Marina Dalmatia. This was going to be our base to head out to have a look at all the yachts that I had short listed in Croatia, there were a couple more in Italy and Spain that I had earmarked if the ones in Croatia turned out to be un-suitable.
The following morning, we had a meeting with Michael from BlueNautic Yachts, it was in this meeting that Michael explained the difference between a private yacht and an ex-charter yacht, he told us that the repair businesses here were very skilled and the best at fixing boats that had damage, he said that they were so good at what they did no one could detect the repair work and even though the yacht would pass a survey they could lead to a lot of trouble in years to come.
The first yacht he showed us was called El Sueno, a 2005 Bavaria 46c, she was a very clean vessel that was a privately-owned yacht that had never been in charter, she was an owners three cabin version, we opened every bilge inspection panel, every locker and lazaret, we checked both heads and the electronics on the navigation station. We were very impressed with how clean and tidy she was inside, we checked the winches, the rigging, the helms and the sails. We could not find a single fault and with only a short discussion we decided to not look any further as all but one of the other yachts we had listed were ex-charter, this yacht was going to be our Annecam, this yacht was the one that would carry us back to Australia, this was the real start to our sailing adventure and much to the delight of Michael the broker we said yes.
Now the fun began, our broker Michael would not allow the owner of El Sueno, who was also called Michael. to sell to us without first spending a week completing sea trials to show us how all the systems worked, how to set the sails, how to anchor and how to handle her at the dock. The sea trials lasted only two days as Michael the owner said to Michael the broker that he could not show us any more about the systems and was more than happy to sign the contract of sale to start the slow process of changing an Austrian registered ship over to an Australian registered ship, it’s only two extra letters, you would think this should be a walk in the park, it was not. The first part of this process was the easy part as it took only a couple of days to receive the de-registration documents from the Austrian Ships Register, we had to have these documents translated and sent to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority as AMSA happens to be the only place we have for ships registration, this part of the process took over six weeks. There was a lot of excitement and we officially performed the name changing ceremony the day that the official registration turned up, we obtained our official Croatian Vignette (a cruising permit) from the Zadar Harbour Master and completed our crew list at the same time.
The very next day we cast off and sailed around some of the Islands for a week as a shake-down cruise, the following week we cleared out of Croatia and sailed to Ancona Italy to clear in there as our three-month visa was almost at an end in Croatia. We were now true international sailors for the very first time.
The dream had become a reality, a whole new world was out there waiting for us. We had no immediate plans, we just savored each and every moment but above all else we had escaped.
We only stayed in Ancona for a week as the marina there did not have any space for us the following week due to some sort of a regatta. We cleared through the Italian Customs and Immigration to sail back over to Croatia as we could stay there for another three months in that same calendar year.
The old owner of El Sueno now our Annecam had paid for a twelve-month marina slip in the Marina Dalmatia and as we were only going to be there for six months in total, this was the easiest location we could leave Annecam for the northern hemisphere winter.
We spent the rest of our time sailing around the Croatian Islands, meeting lots of wonderful people and our dear friend Fiona joined us for a couple of weeks on her way from the Doctor Who convention held in the United Kingdom. Fiona, we call “Pivo” would go on to join us every year as we sailed Annecam back to Australia.
The photo is one of our very first sunsets taken from the dock with Annecam in shot on the left-hand side. We had just moved on board.
“Though no one can go back in life and make a brand-new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand-new ending.”