Croatia | Sea | Kayaking | Tours | Lifejacket Adventures - Adriatic Expeditions

Since 1998 over the last weekend in September, off the town of Murter on Murter Island, a regatta has been held each year for boats with traditional lanteen rigs (such as those in the pictures). The regatta is the Latinsko Idro (the Latin Sail) and is organized by Zeljko Jerat. Its website can be found here (though it needs to be updated for this year). Zeljko also can teach those interested how to use one of these old fishing boats - he has a house on the Kornati Islands which is used as a base for 5 days of sail training. (Contact us for further details.)

There is a renaissance currently in the building and sailing of Dalmatian wooden fishing boats.

Our plan is to take 2 boats - the gajeta and the leut - to this years regatta.

Spring is here - so there is a rush to finish the winter boat building projects. The picture above is of a model of the research vessel One Eagle. It was completed in the German Neue Jadewerft Shipyard in 1969. When it left, after final fit-out, the Arista Nautica yard here in Split last week it looked a little different (see the pictures below) - and is now known as the Amadeus. Reymond Langton Design delivered a sleek-looking renovation for owner Bernard Arnault of Louis Vuitton.

Last summer Tony Blair and Bono were enjoying sunning themselves on her decks.

The Amadeus is 70m long, with a 11.5m beam and a 4.5m draft. She is pushed along by nearly 3 000hp-worth of Caterpillar diesels. The previous superstructure was removed and replaced with aluminium, plus a new bow was added. She now has luxury rooms for 12 guests and 18 crew have their own berths downstairs.

Murray and Cathrine, whose Zephyrus Apartments are the best in town, have been fixing a 11.2m Classic. She is an Argentinian boat, built in 1967 at the German Frers yard to a Dorado B design and was sailed for 6 months to reach Split from Buenos Aires. Murray has replaced the rigging, stripped and re-varnished the teak decks, repainted the hull and re-wired her.

Progress on the leut continues. The planking and caulking have been completed. Next work will begin on the interior.

The Croatia Boat Show was on again this week. Its Split’s chance to see the latest bling - and not just that which floats. Here’s Aklie learning what’s important in life!

The Lamborghini was not for sale - it was a sweetener if you bought one of the super-yachts.

Most of the boats were of no particular interest - just a lot of plastic, stainless steel and LED lights.

The boat of the show for me is built by a Slovenian company, Shipman Carbon Yachts. They were showing their 24m version, the Shipman 80, designed and produced in their factory next to Lake Bled. Its almost a Wally Boat - but not quite. The particular boat at the show was recently purchased by a Croatian. The Shipman 50 won European Boat of the Year in 2004.

Leopoldo from Bolici Yachts showed us the Carbon Cube 36 - a racing yacht made completely from carbon-fiber. Its like a Ferrari 430 Scuderia - a stripped-down red racing machine - but with what Bolici saved in weight during the construction of the hull they added some cruising comforts - such as a kitchen and a head and made these out of carbon-fiber as well.

For those that already have a Porsche Carrera in the garage, Fearless Yachts have teamed with the Porsche Design Studio and are making a 8.5m speedboat with 600hp and a top speed of almost 75 knots inspired by the car, for the boat shed.

After the sun went down, the parties began.

Azimut Yachts was kind enough to be offering music and free Moet. Tim seemed to also appreciate the girls which were serving it.

Today’s picture comes from the set of Bella Biondina. The movie, based a true story of a young Split girl who falls in love with an Italian Fascist soldier at the end of the Second World War, is being shot on the streets of Split at the moment. It is being directed Danijela Marušić, who also made the locally famous mini-series Malo Misto. It was interesting to see the reactions of the locals to actors in Partisan uniforms. Many were indifferent, but some reacted with strong negative feelings.

Whilst I was in Trogir the other day I saw the replica of the 16th Century galleon Tirena, a typical trading vessel of the period from Ragusa (i.e. the Dubrovnik Republic), which is used for excursions outside the walls of Dubrovnik in the summer. Its 30m long and 7.7m wide. The drawings for the replica, completed according to old plans from the Dubrovnik Maritime museum, were done by Velimir Salamon, the man responsible for the falkuša.

The ship was constructed in Omiš, at a cost of about 1 000 000€.

Speaking of old boats, work continues on the leut. Mate, the Dalmatian carpenter, is replacing a certain number of planks. Roger, the English mechanic, will start work soon on renovating the motor. The crew will be an Aussie and a Frenchman - its becoming a true UN project.

Looking across the leut’s shed, for the last week the USS Mount Whitney has been tied up. The Whitney is the flagship of the United States Navy’s 6th Fleet (the Mediterranean Fleet) - it flies the pennant of Vice Admiral James A. Winnefeld.

It is considered to be the most sophisticated Command, Control, Communications, Computer, and Intelligence ship ever commissioned. It can receive and transmit large amounts of secure data from any point on earth through the multitude of HF, UHF, VHF, SHF and EHF antennae on its decks.

The Sixth Fleet has both US and NATO responsibilities, and is based in Naples.

So why is it in Split?

President Bush is on his way to Eastern Europe. He will stop in Ukraine before going to Bucharest, Romania, for the opening of NATO’s largest summit ever on Wednesday.

NATO leaders will meet with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon as well as officials from the European Union and World Bank. They will also vote on expanding the alliance to include Albania, Croatia, and Macedonia, as well as vote on accepting applications from Georgia and Ukraine to join the alliance, a move that is opposed by Russia. On Friday Bush will then come to visit us in Croatia.

President Bush will wrap up his trip in the Black Sea resort of Sochi for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, discussing the U.S. missile defense system.

Joining the EU (hopefully by 2011) and NATO are the biggest issues in Croatia at the moment. Some people are against the moves - a new organisation has been formed in Croatia called the Anti-Imperialist Coalition, which has announced protests against President Bush at Franjo Tudjman Square in Zagreb on Friday at 5pm.

Though we are not happy with Americans at the moment - one competitor, American-owned Adriatic Kayak Tours, has been stealing our photographs to use on their website (we are fighting to have them taken down) as well as copying our Vis Tour- we see definite benefits in Croatia being an EU and NATO member. For instance we could take AKT to the European Court and not have to wait for the slow Croatian courts to deal with their infringement of our copyright.

So, things are heating up here and in the rest of Eastern Europe, with the West moving East. On top of all these meetings there have been the problems in Kosovo for the last month. That’s why the most important American ship in the Mediterranean is docked in Split.

Today was an example of that though Dubrovnik is definitely a beautiful town, it is quite superficial - Split has a tougher, yet richer, life.

These last weeks we have been learning about wood in relation to traditional boats. For the leut, oak (hrast in Croatian) will be used below the water-line. But not just any oak - it must be either from Slavonia (the north-east rump of Croatia) or Lika (the area around Plitvice Lakes) - i.e. hrast lužnjak (in Latin - Quercus robur or in English - common oak). Bosnian oak (hrast kitnjak - Quercus petraea - sessile oak) just won’t do - its not as strong.

Its best to let the oak dry for a year; we were lucky to find first-class oak which had been stored for 3 years. The boards are currently about 5m long, 30cm wide and 3cm thick. They will be cut to replace those on the boat which may have rotted, etc. and will end up being 2.5cm thick.

Above the water-line, local pine is used. It only has to be kiln-dried for 72 days.

The above drawing was done by naval architect Velimir Salamon when he and Joško Božanić were preparing to rebuild the gajeta falkuša - the indigenous boat of Komiža, on Vis Island. The terms are the parts of the boat in Komižan dialect.

Instead of being built the traditional way, as a carvel planked boat, such as our old leut, the falkuša used 3 layers of thinner pine with West epoxy between. This means that the falkuša doesn’t have to be concerned about drying out and the planks shrinking. Kayaking around Dalmatia sunken wooden boats are often seen. This is done if the boat has been stored out of the water and the planks have opened up. After a couple of days under water the boat is retrieved and in the sun it all shrinks back together.

The last picture of me rolling over a boat was taken by Peter McBride when he came to Croatia with adventure journalist Jon Bowermaster on an Oceans 8 kayak expedition.

Its been a long wait but finally our leut is in the shed. Our previous attempts failed - but finally brute force prevailed. Only six guys, two fork lifts, twenty steel pipes and eight hours of continuous hard work were required to complete the task.

The knowledge of those involved made the whole task a lot easier - there must have been nearly 100 years of maritime industry experience working together.

The previous trailer was re-used sans the wheels. The fore and aft of the boat were raised and a section of the trailer were slid under each on top of pipes. Then, using a forklift at each end, the 5000kg boat was pushed, prodded, turned and dragged into the shed.

Many thanks to John, Nigel, Marcel, Tim, Morton, Jan, Lene and Jules.

Except for the odd day when the bura howls down from the mountains, the Adriatic Sea is relatively calm. This makes the Dalmatian Coast a perfect location for ship-borne activities which may not be possible elsewhere. One idea that we have been asked to help on is a restaurant/bar catamaran. This work is part of our plan to learn everything possible about boat construction and renovation.

We encountered a small problem, yesterday, as we tried to shift the boat into the shed at the boatyard. Welded to the bottom of the trailer we built are 10 trolley wheels. They are rated to 300kgs each. The boat we judged to be 5 tons. But of course 10 x 300 doesn’t equal 5000. We assumed that the wheels’ manufacturer had allowed a large safety margin with the rating. Well, we were wrong - and the wheels buckled as the forklift tried to pull the boat in. We will now have to lift the boat off and drag her in the old way - Egyptian style - on about 20 sections of pipe.

I guess there is a moral to this story…