Diane's Version of the mooring at Hvar

This is the real story of the docking in Hvar, apparently our captain posted a rather sanitized version of the story yesterday, and I will attempt to paint the true picture of the event. (We are not sure if this has already been posted, we had some problems, so ignore this entire thing if you already read my first attempt)
So, let me begin. When sailing into a town, the captain looks first to tie up to shore, which is tricky enough, but when we got to Hvar, the new hot spot, all the slots were full. So next, he searched for a buoy to tie up to. We spotted one in between 2 other smaller boats that were already tied up. Ron backed the boat between the other boats, while RT and Kenny played snag the buoy with the pole, this is much harder than it sounds, the captain has to keep the boat from drifting (think crashing) into the other two boats, while his crew flails about attempting the grab the buoy with the pole and then tying it off with the rope (called line on a boat). As sailors are inclined to do, I believe there were some choice words being used as they tried and tried to catch the elusive buoy.
Once that was accomplished and the front of the boat was secured, the next step is to tie the back of the boat to shore. This is when things really got interesting. Ken and Ron lowered the dingy and set off for shore with the line, only to discover that 1) the dingy did not have a plug and shortly they would be rather damp and 2) the rope was hopelessly tangled, apparently not properly stored by the last folks who used the boat. Fortunately, RT had seen some extra plugs, so he got one of those quickly and they shoved that in the hole. As RT was at the helm of the boat, trying to keep it from crashing into our neighbors as it swayed back and forth, Ron and Ken were in the now no longer sinking dingy trying to untangle the rope – that took about 20 minutes. I was in the cabin trying not to have a nervous breakdown, Bev and Patti were much more help on deck watching the other boats and trying to help RT keep ours from, as Ron puts it, “gently knocking into the boat next to us”, I call it a boat crash. You have to visualize our vessel, it is just short of the QEII in size, and is a little hard to maneuver. Again, I am sure our captain would disagree. So, after what seemed like an eternity, the guys got the rope untangled, tied it to shore, and were back on board. I had vodka.
Bev is sure the story will be retold over the years, anything they say I will verify, there is not enough exaggeration in the world to really do this event justice. As evidence of that, our always calm, unruffled captain, went below and took a shower. I need to be sure that you realize he was the picture of control and competence this time too, even in the trickiest situations, he never loses his cool, he has me for that.

Diane

Every crew needs an “in house philosopher” and we have Kenny. In addition to being an able crew ape and gourmet cook, he comes up with the best advice for living the good life. One of them is “what will happen will happen whether you worry about it or not.” and “suffering is wanting things to be different then they are.” He reminds us that Mark Twain said, “I have had many problems in my life and some of them actually happened.” All this philosophy comes in handy when the ice cream stand is already closed after dinner or the wine at dinner a disappointment all the dock places filled or the OJ we purchase tastes like orange soda.

Diane