For me there is nothing better while travelling than being in a new spot every day. New input, new landscapes, new places to discover. Occasionally when I get up with the moving I stay an additional night somewhere for some chill sessions, but more than often it is hopping around and just enjoying the time while passing.
The cool thing is that sailing fits this description perfectly as well. It is even more about the journey than about the destination than with travelling over land. I was talking to a friend recently who was also boating in the same region as that I was, but they were travelling by powerboat.
Don't you just love this view of this floating dock where all these boats are just chilling together?
She told me that often in the morning she would see the sailing boats, and then they took off in their powerboat and headed to their destination in an hour. The same sailing boats would arrive later in the afternoon or in the beginning of the night.
The question then rises: who had the more fun day in the end? The ones that were actively working on their journey? Or the ones that burned a ton of gas and chilled in a little bay afterwards (which is also really damn nice).
You tell me.
Slow pace
The cool thing about sailing in wider open waters is that the pace is slow. Sure you have a route and a place where you want to go. Sure when you are taking off it is a bit more crowded and you need to navogate through that. But once in the big blue sea it is all chill sessions and having a pace of 5 knots per hour or so which is like 8.5 km/h, not that bad even!
Because of this pace you still can get a lot of distance covered in a day but you also have time to let the mind drift off for a bit while seeing new stuff every time.
Later in the afternoon choices have to be made about where to spend the night. Will this be on anchor or will this be in a harbour somewhere where there is life of a floating dock where there is nothing else to do. All options are open.
So because of all of the storms that were in the meds anchoring was absolutely no option and even with harbours it was a bit of a search to get one that was sheltered enough from the wind and water elements.
Mooring balls?
I did however learn about a new way of overnight sleeping with mooring balls. These balls are floating and attached wit a rope to a concrete block on the sea bottom. You can catch these balls and attach your own lines to them and then your boat is secured (not in super heavy weather though)
Here in this bay the mooring balls even had a second line attachted to them. So one you tie up to the bow and one you pull and then tie it up to your stern. Then there is even a thord line attached to that which you pull under the boat and then attach to the other side of the stern. That means the boat is fixed in three points and it actually super stable.
This is a lot more easy than swimming a stern line to shore if you ask me. And you can see everyone was able to stay nice in a row even though the bay was further empty.
These mooring balls are known to be in Croatia a lot, and I actually really like them. And in that kind of way every bay is different. Every dock is different and every anchoring point is different.
Enough to see at a slow pace style of boating along!
