Heidi & I were invited to visit the walled city of Dubrovnik, Croatia & then go sailing for 7 days through the coastal islands Northwest of Dubrovnik with 8 "old" friends in mid-September.

It seemed like an adventure, even though the climber-friends that put the trip together, told us there would be little climbing, but a lot of sailing & hiking.

After a long day one getting there, we toured the walled city of Dubrovnik the next morning. It's quite a scenic place & a Unesco World-Heritage site, but still a "living-city," where the locals deal with hoardes of tourists, no cars, & steep stairs on most side streets. Dubrovnik is also known to fans of the HBO series Game of Thrones, as King's Landing, so that brings in still more tourists. There were a lot of tourists, but the "old-town" is pretty amazing for folks that like history.



The history of Croatia & The Balkans is convoluted & somewhat dark, but one of the later dark chapters was when Croatia was fighting for independence from what was once Yugoslavia in 1991. The remainder of the Yugoslavian army besieged & bombarded greater Dubrovnik & the old walled city. Our 70- something tour-guide lived through the siege & told us stories during our tour about the destruction & suffering the residents lived through. Towards the end of the story, she smiled & said "it was the skinniest I have been, since I was a teen-ager."

When I looked up the history of that nasty little war, the big bombardment day for Dubrovnik recorded this:
The war is over, Croatia is still mostly Catholic, English is the second language, everywhere we went folks were friendly, & everything was clean & tidy. Croatia has also joined the European Union & is a NATO member. It's a great place to tourist about.

On day two, our group hiked endless steps, then a pleasant trail, up to a Napolianic fort above the city & a great view.


Late that afternoon, we left in our chartered 45' catamaran for 7 days of sailing & hiking, with an occasional swim or snorkal along the way.



We enjoyed exploring islands along the way & always found friendly locals that spoke English & liked our money.




On Lastovo, our friends did a 12 mile hike that included hiking the summit of the highest mountain on the island. Heidi & I broke off, did some group grocery shopping in the island center town of Lastovo, hiked up to a windy high point, & only achieved about 6 miles & 1,000' vetical. It was Ok, since my old left knee had been hurting for the last 3 weeks from geriatric overuse.



Looking down to the town of Lastovo.

We had anchored in a small harbor at the scenic small port town of Zapopatika.

A fair number of boats backed into the shore there, so their passengers could party in the town, but another 10 or so boats anchored in the bay, for free. That of course, included us, since we like free. Just before dark, a French-flag catamaran parked a little too close to us, but at the end of a big day, Captain Daniele just muttered about those fukers, & didn't do anything.

Heidi caught the French boat in her twilight photo.


About 4:00 A.M. in a windstorm, the French boat dragged anchor & drifted into us. There were some impressive crashes as its stern hit our bow. We all rushed on deck & found our irate Captain trying to rouse the French Captain to action. After our bow put some impressive holes in their stern, without doing significant damage to our boat, the French finally moved away. We too motored out to open water in the dark, since a minor storm was building.


Did we sink or survive? Stay tuned for more!