Paklenica National Park

Dis-moi où sur la planète
Est-ce qu’on trouve un vide-tête
Un espace vide sonore
Une île bruit mort

Zita Swoon
Individu Animal

Wuthering heights	A mule job	Shelter from thunderstorms
The best sauce is appetite	Evening walk	Timeless
Water filtering and deciding on tomorrow’s plans in dusk	Unwilling to carry out the plans in dawn	Retrospective
Mines – fate and badly indicated trails lead us well past the sign only minutes later	Gotcha!	Salt or snow?
Parnassius apollo	Longicorn Beetles busy with business	Otherwordly
A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do	Reconciliation	Read the manual

Blue

With these cloudbursts the last few days, all I can think of is putting on my wetsuit and diving…
As we dropped anchor in the bay of Komiza on Vis island in Croatia, the two dive centers located at the waterfront immediately caught our eye and we just couldn’t resist the appealing wreck dive offers. It wasn’t cheap, but a good deal seen the quality of their offer. We dived on the wreck of a steam ship carrying cobblestones, which crashed in a narrow passage between two islands (which we passed the evening before under spinnaker sail, taking over two other yachts as we did, and indeed we had to keep full attention to avoid the shallow zones). The steam ship lies between 10 and 34 meters deep in amazingly clear and blue waters. Of the approximately 100 dives I’ve made, this was the deepest, and apart from the five training dives, the only one outside Oman and hence the first one in the Mediterranean, and merely my third strictly recreational (non-scientific sampling) dive! You bet I enjoyed it, and I’m still sorry two other dives on natural drop-offs at the Kornati islands were cancelled due to overbooking…

An additional video fragment can be downloaded here.

Rays of sunshine lure one down	Unfortunate octopus	“Gee, some dude seriously messed up here…”
Strange, yet peaceful combination of two worlds	Deeper and deeper	Sponges have taken control
Bottom line

Unjealousing

Going out on a sailing trip was the most boring thing I ever did. While in the best case the sea remains calm, the land starts wobbling like a rocking chair after staying some time on a boat. The interior of the boat is designed for 4 dwarfs instead of 8 adults and is competitive to an old oven. The sun is beating on your head and cooking your brains all day, and when it doesn’t, it’s because the sails are blocking the sun, causing the chilly wind to prevail. Winds change unpredictably between too weak and too strong, but share the property of forcing you to the opposite direction you wanted to head. By the time sailing eventually got you where you wanted, your holiday is over and your bank account has dropped far below freezing point. You’re continuously forced to face the same people, day after day, so in the end 25-years-of-marriage-style fighting takes the upper hand in regular conversations. Nothing designed to ease up this hell ever works properly: the hand-pumped toilets, the autopilot, the GPS, the plotter, the VHF and even the motor – all apply for instant demolition in a sudden mood of deep frustration.

Observe and weep.

I’m rich!	“Mariette” has control.	Hardly 6 bft, but it looks cool.
Dos rifos.	“Sjett’n”!	Land? Where?
Bored, again.	A wide-angle, my kingdom for a wide-angle!	Coolness.
I’ll take the spi road and ye’ll take the genoa road and I’ll be on the island afooooore ye!	Focus.	Chill.
Upholding the cliche.	Man over board (MOB).	MOB, the sequel.

Slightly decadent

Contracts signed, advances paid, written exams… er, still to take, but that’ll be a piece of cake I hope

(I can’t actually believe 5 people, sailors as well as non-sailors, trust me enough to let me play skipper for a whole week, my first time as a skipper anyway… I guess they’re somewhat blinded by the mediterranean sun and sea.) But no worries…:

CROATIA, HERE WE COME!!!!! (almost)

A vekor 361, the 11.2m yacht we’ll be using to cleave the crystal blue waters.