Cruise

Imagine your first driving lesson, but your car is 12 meters long, weighs 10 tons, and you’re on worn summer tires on black ice. That’s somewhat what sailing a catamaran feels like.

Learning to sail is truly exhausting and has nothing to do with a relaxing beach holiday. Matthias, who attended the catamaran training with me, told me it took him about 10 charter weeks to feel safe and relaxed as a skipper.

This is one of the reasons why we’ve been hesitant to venture far from the ports and have only been sticking our noses into the wind for half days. Other reasons include physical and mental exhaustion, various injuries, as well as constant defects and breakdowns on the boats.

In the 6 weeks, we’ve already replaced 2 alternators, and on one boat, they actually forgot to refill the transmission oil after service. We managed to get almost 500 meters. Always check everything, even if the bros get offended, mistakes happen.

In the third charter week, we finally dare to go on our first little trip. From Sibenik to Kremik, where we spend a night, then to Jezera where we stay two nights, and then back to Sibenik. I guess this is how the Apollo astronauts must have felt: completely on their own, in the vast expanse of the Adriatic.

While docking in Jezera, I make my first beginner’s mistake and drive forward into the lane, when switching to reverse, the side wind mercilessly pushes me into the parked boats. Luckily, I’ve watched enough Epic Navigator.

I shift to neutral and just let myself drift with the wind into a free, wide docking space. Never has a marina worker mounted a bicycle so quickly to rush to our position. Even though it’s difficult as a beginner, you must ignore these people. If you follow their shouting and waving and try to somehow save the situation with full throttle, then it becomes dangerous. This way, it’s no problem at all, it just looks embarrassing and you become the talk of the town during the after-work beer. But every beginning is hard.

While docking in Sibenik, we almost face the same situation: up to 20 kn side wind. This time we try it in reverse and it works 100 times better. The skipper from the charter company even congratulates us on our performance. I am incredibly proud, drenched in sweat, and utterly exhausted.

*This blog post has been automatically translated by a Large Language Model.