The boys of the Sandy Lee had a long sail planned north up to the Krka National Park – famous for its waterfalls. This took us up through a shipping channel and through a fort protected river entrance into the National Park with gorgeous sedimentary layers in cliffs. We weren’t too sure if we were going to fit under bridges (we did) and came across some odd looking buoys along the side of the river – these were mussel buoys leaning over depending on how large the mussels were. Shouting over and gesticulating wildly we encouraged a chap to come out with a bucket of 5 kilos of fresh mussels, taken off one of the buoys. We tied the bucket at the bathing deck and headed further up the river into a lake.
We needed more provisioning so stopped off at a small harbour where a gorgeous, heavily pierced, supermarket assistant helped us fill up our baskets. We munched on more delicious Croatian icecream whilst watching jellyfish and sea snakes slither through the water – discouraging us from swimming there. We motored up the narrowing river to the marina where we could pick up the tourist boat to go deeper into the waterfalls following a reed lined river with signets swimming with their parent swans. The first sight of the waterfalls is stunning – it is a set of waterfalls cascading down from quite some way and height.
There is a walk which we followed around and over the waterfall, a circular watchplatform built for the King and wooden platforms which take you over the top so you have the water flowing under you. A fantastic national park and a great way to spend an afternoon wandering through woods and over waterfalls.
On the boat back were a couple of tour guides, one who was the spitting image of Drew Barrymore. I wandered through the town at the marina and there was a church which had been bombed by the Serbs during the war and it was amazing to think that even here war had touched so deep in Croatia.
Time was marching on so we made our way back down the river and out across the Adriatic to an island with a small empty bay where we were to have our mussel dinner. The moon rose over the bay and it was a perfect spot – calamari and mussels with some Croatian wine and bread and olives – this was luxury. Then the other boats arrived and our solitude was gone. One anchored very close to us and on refusing to move we had to start singing filthy rugby songs and peeing over the side – they got the message and shifted.
We were now out of gin which recalls the tale of Sir Francis Chichester when returning to his port after circumnavigating the earth he was asked ‘When were your spirits at their lowest ebb?’ the obvious answer seemed to be, ‘When the gin gave out.’ “. Fortunately in our case there was my emergency bottle of 18 year old malt.
The full moon lit up the bay during the night and Kevin decided to sleep outside with his snoring drifting over the water as more boats came in overnight (it must have been some night navigation exercise on a regatta)
