Day seven - Dubrovnik to Lopud

Today the weather is much better - a bit ahead of schedule. Laura and I went for cheeky showers at the marina but we didn't feel guilty as they refused to let us in just because it was a bit windy - classic mooring man jobsworth behaviour. We set off for Cavtat, a town on a horseshoe bay we visited last year on a trip boat. We had lunch at a cool waterside restaurant called The Spinaker and I was determined to go back. We are sitting there now as I write this - with Sea Bird at anchor in the bay. The sea was still quite heavy on the way here - but not as bad as I'd feared. On the way, the shite yellow apology for a GPS finally passed on. All it does now is display horizontal lines on the screen. The charter guys will probably be upset as they introduced it to me rather like a much loved elderly dog that is blind and deaf but nobody can bring themselves to put down. (Caroline - think Frazzle!). I think the constant loss of power every few seconds was too much for it. We have an app for the iPad that acts as a chart plotter so we've purchased the Adriatic charts for it and hopefully that will help us get back.

Last time we were here we experienced the 'on-off' nature of the winds. It's a bit like one of those showers with a dodgy control - freezing, freezing, freezing - whoops, third degree burns. Hopefully we will be able to sail a bit this afternoon. We heading back towards Split via Polace, (on Mljet), Korcula and Hvar.

Later: We did manage to sail a bit before the wind veered to dead on the nose as usual - and then dropped to nothing. We had decided to anchor in a bay on a small island called Lopud - but when we arrived we realised that although it's protected from the prevailing wind it's open to a fairly heavy swell so not very comfortable. We decided to try another bay on Kolocep a couple of miles away but as we tried to up anchor it became obvious that the engine was stuck in reverse. Further inspection revealed that the end of the gear control cable has sheared. We phoned the SOS number and eventually got hold of Josko (for it is he) who advised us to change gear manually by moving the lever on the gearbox through a panel in one of the aft cabins. We have to head back to Dubrovnik (again) and the mechanics at the marina will try to fix it. ("Stuck in reverse? I will try to fix you" He could audition for Coldplay - ha ha that is a good one!) Something tells me there will be a lot of tooth sucking and a saga about the difficulty of obtaining parts. We are bouncing about uncomfortably here and the wind is getting up again. This is not great! 

Later still: I've managed to lash the cable to the lever with some thin rope. The problem is that the brass pin wears away with the action of gear changing (you can see all the brass particles on the picture below) until it wears through the side of the hole for the split pin. Then the split pin falls away and the cable drops off the lever. There is still a thin sliver of brass pin left - and hopefully this will do the job for tomorrow morning - or longer if they don't have the part because we're done with hanging around Dubrovnik Marina! 

anchored off Cavtat

lunch at the Spinaker

gear cable nightmare