Life on Waterworld: putting the fun in function

Okay, it's not just an offhand comment anymore from a guy at the marina in Split, we officially are living in 'Waterworld'. Someone else walked by the boat today where we are docked and said the same thing. I haven't seen the movie yet myself (although we are all dying to watch it now) but I gather it is because we don't look quite as ritzy as the multi-million dollar yachts we are often parked beside. Selkie is definitely more function than fashion, with mismatched fenders (compared to everyone else's immaculate white ones), laundry often drying along her rails, a papermache crocodile that lived on deck until it felt time to return to the water, bicycles and strollers, and various projects constantly on the go. But that hasn't stopped us from having a whole lot of fun.

We rigged up a rope swing from the mast.

We've been having a lot of fun with the kids.

The kids playing ‘tortuga’.

We’ve gotten to see some really beautiful little towns. This is Komiza, on the island of Vis.

The night market scene at Komiza.

The ‘blue cave’ on the island of Bisevo. We climbed pretty far up its walls then jumped into the water that was lit from beneath from the sun shining through an underwater tunnel. Quite surreal.

We have definitely gotten creative at finding climbing. Here is Nelson up the mast (he went up to help fix the genoa).



Selkie from above.


A few days later, I found myself up the mast as well, taking some measurements of the rigging. It feels very high up there, and really moves around with the waves!

We’ve learned how to put up and take down the different sails, take a reef, jibe, tack, avoid taking people’s heads off with the boom, and other important sailing things that I knew nothing about before arriving.

You will be proud to learn that I have finished reading both books previously mentioned and am now being called 'Yachtmaster'. Now if I could only get people to stop snickering as they say it!

We had to get creative, but we managed to get Celia off the boat for the morning of her birthday in order to throw her a surprise party. Here is Ger and the kids hiding under the table awaiting her arrival.

Celia was very surprised and happy.

We’ve had generally beautiful weather, the heat being much more bearable now that we are in the water and often have a breeze, but it did turn nasty one evening. Here is Celia at the helm in the midst of a crazy rainstorm.

Nelson kayaked over to watch some local fisherman bring in their catch and pretty soon we were cleaning fish and having a little bbq on the boat.


We finally did some rockclimbing on the island of Vis. We had heard rumours that there were some bolted routes but couldn’t find anyone who actually knew any details so Nelson and I finally just started hiking looking for them. After a few hours we found climbing and it was better than we could ever have expected – a beautiful route up to a cave in the middle of a limestone wall, and tunnels that went in one side of the crag and came out much higher up several hundred meters along the wall. We came back the next day with the rest of the gang.

Nelson in the tunnel with the kids.

From the cave, one pitch up, a tunnel also went down into the bowels of the mountain. We didn’t have our headlamps on our harnesses, so we never found out if it met up with the other ones. Definitely need to find out the history of all this! Apparently Vis was an important island during the second world war, with allied forces launching attacks on Italy from here. Now Italians are the primary source of tourist dollars for the island.

Almost better than climbing is taking kids climbing!! Wow, it is so cool to see them monkeying up something and being so excited about it all. And it is relatively so much safer than many things kids do - they can just go all out without being hurt if they fall. Normally, a fall means a scraped knee or bumped chin (or worse), which I know is all part of letting kids grow up but it is very hard not to want to try to protect them from possible bumps and bruises all the time! So it is nice to put a harness and rope on them and just let them go.

Nuria looking very determined.




Dylan and his very proud mom after he finished the route.

At the beginning of September, Graeme, our final crewmember, will arrive and we will set off across the Mediterranean. Unfortunately, Nelson also leaves then for school, so he won't get to go for a big sail after all. Until then, we will just continue to enjoy the 'cruising' life while getting the boat and ourselves ready for the voyage.