Day five - Dubrovnik

Everything changed today as the weather broke. We had a lazy morning as we got back late from Dubrovnik last night. We used the excellent marina showers and at last found a decent sized supermarket that sold meat. Although we had some rain and some thunder, it still seemed quite calm so we left our berth and set off up the river. The local forecast suggested the wind would be 15mph maximum which was not too alarming. The plan was to go to the anchorage off Lokrum that we'd checked out last night and then visit the city by taking the dinghy into the old town port. Then we were going to go on to Cavtat - a town with a very sheltered natural harbour a few miles further down the coast - for the night.

As we headed under the road bridge at the mouth of the river the wind was beginning to gust at 20 knots. As we got nearer to open sea things began to look alarming. The swell got bigger and bigger and the wind was hitting 25 knots. Given that things were looking ugly and we clearly did not have the correct information I decided not to go out and we headed back into safe waters to anchor. We had some lunch and checked some more sites. We now think we are likely to be stuck here until Saturday. 

This afternoon, after assuring ourselves that the boat was secure, we took the bus into Dubrovnik and did some shopping. We got back to the boat about 1945 and had supper. All is calm at the moment but we are expecting nasty weather overnight - so we are making sure we are fully prepared. Hopefully there will be no repeat of Vis 2005 (described earlier). If the outlook stays the same for tomorrow night we will try to get back into the marina.

ACI Marina at Dubrovnik

Old town port