Dubrovnik Marina – Wednesday 21 June 2018

I was so upset yesterday that I could not bring myself to write a blog.  It was an awful day.  

It didn’t start out too bad. The sun was shining and we got away from our mooring in good time.  There was no wind at all to start with and as ever we motored.   The wind picked up a little bit and was dead behind at about 5-7 knots.  We tried putting out the Genoa, but it just did nothing.  So we spend a long morning and afternoon motoring, which was very boring.

We got to Dubrovnik at about 3pm having had no lunch other that a few biscuits.  The mooring man paid no attention to our pleas for help to come in.  He chose us quite a tight space between boats and Richard had to work really hard to get us anyway near the right angle to get in.  Eventually the mooring man went to the bows of the port boat and took our stern line and helped rope us in.  So we did finally get safely tied up.

I was by this time desperate to ring the engineer (whose name I later was told was Alan) to get him to us as soon as possible because the mooring man made it clear that no matter what (even a storm) we have to leave here on Friday.  That does not give us long for repairs.

Alan was quite nice on the phone saying that he was working away but would be with us at about 6pm. This left us the afternoon to clear out the front cabin so he could work on the bow thruster.  Richard emptied all the stuff in there and it filled our cabin and the salon!  The only place to move on the boat was the cockpit!  Richard also found that the cabin was very dirty in places that were covered and filled a bucket with hot water and started to clean. After we had done this we were exhausted and boiling so we went to the pool here.  

The pool is one of the attractions of the place.  The only problem is that it has no shade, so we sat in the bar and after our swim had an ice cream each.

Back on the boat, somewhat refreshed, the next disaster hit.  The freshwater pump stopped working!  At this stage I was hysterical.  This was not helped by my falling down the hole in the floor Richard opened to look at the pump.  I threatened to immediately jump ship and go home.

I managed to stay aboard until Alan did turn up sometime after 6:30pm.  He looked at everything and when he turned on the tap in the galley the pump worked.  His explanation is that the pump is too big and in the wrong position so it overheats and stops.  Just don’t run it for so long.  There is no doubt we will need a new pump!

To make a very long story short Alan called in a collegue and the two of them were on the boat sorting things out by about 10pm.  They had to do it today because they had a big job on Thursday and they work on the charter boats on Friday and Saturday.  So if they couldn’t fix everything today we would be stuck in Dubrovnik until Monday or Tuesday at the earliest.  We would have to move from here, but Alan did say he could give us a berth he has just a little way down the river.

The bow thruster problem was as we thought the pin had broken.  They were able to make a pin which set the thruster working properly.  The real problem was the windlass.  It was not just a detached wire.  There was no electricity getting to the on off switch.  When they opened up the battery compartment and tried to trace where the wire went they saw an ungodly mess.  Yes, the Italians did it again.  They totally screwed up the wiring and you cannot tell what goes where.  We were told that it could be several days work to sort it all out and put label wires so you know what is what.  They obviously couldn’t do that now and felt they could do a quick fix which would be safe and durable and useable until the winter.  What they did was to bypass the switch and connect the windlass directly to the battery that starts the engine.  That way the windlass will work and be on but only when the engine is running. Apparently most boats work that way!

So by 10pm we were sufficiently repaired to go on our way on Friday.  While all this was going on I made chicken kebabs to eat in the cockpit.  I can’t praise Alan and his co-worker enough.  They really went out of their way to sort us out.  And in the end they only charged us 200 Euro!

So after they had gone we had a shower and a good measure of whiskey and went to bed.  We hope things go smoother now.           

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