Surf to Stari Grad 🏄🏻‍♀️

Becca

Strong gusts up to 20kt, we surfed beautifully downwind into Stari Grad. Such a cute beautiful town 😍

Chris Jacob

Today was our first proper day of sailing and what a baptism for the new crew! We had an early start of swimming and paddle boarding in our little piece of paradise metres from the rocks (although our anchorage stopped us all from sleeping, it was beautiful!). The kids were a little nervous to venture outside of the long line “pen”, another reason to anchor further from shore next time. 📝 Our goal today was Stari Grad, with a stop in a bay on Brac that had an inflatable playground 2 years ago. Hopefully it’s still there for the kids 🙏. We had a light wind motor at first, but could finally get the sails up after an hour and by the time we reached our lunch spot Asti was zipping along! ⛵️ Becca and I got the sails down outside the bay’s entrance, while my grandad held us head to wind 😊. The bay didn’t disappoint - lovely simple mooring buoy (free during the day) and a 2min swim from a giant inflatable play area. You know you’ve done well when people don’t want to move on. Set the bar high now 😬. Our afternoon sail was a test of our crew’s sense of adventure and the effectiveness of their stugeron pills! Looking at the forecast, I envisaged flying downwind into Stari Grad in the calm sea we left outside the bay before lunch. We got our broad reach - but 20kts of it and quite a large swell on the starboard aft 🌊. The boat was fine and sailed along quickly. However we were rocking and surfing, which was uncomfortable / nerve-racking for our crew (most of which had never sailed before!). There was quite a lot of ETA checking… ⏱ But they managed it! The swell calmed down in the bay outside Stari Grad, without a let up in the breeze. Eventually we took the sails down as we started to broach going dead down wind in a 22kt gust. Nothing happened, but the name of the game on this holiday is super cautious! Our mooring in Stari Grad left a lot to be desired. I didn’t prepare the crew well at all. We were still towing the dinghy as we entered the narrower than I remember harbour. It got caught on a slime line and we struggled to set ourselves free for a bit. After dispatching the dinghy our parking was actually very smooth considering the conditions and tight space - however I hadn’t briefed the team. Our lines crew weren’t coordinated and we got our bow thruster caught in a slime line. Despite all that - we have a perfect spot in beautiful Stari Grad for the night 😍 Lessons: 1. Prepare everything well away from harbour / anchorage, in lots of space. 2. Make sure everyone understands their one job and what could go wrong (roaming fender crew were quite shocked by having to actually needing to protect our boat with their fender!) 3. Bow crew now announces when it’s not safe to use bow thrusters. 4. Extra pair of hands helping to heave the slime line.