The Yacht Week Croatia Black Route 2013 - The Climax (Hvar)

I'm laughing to myself already and I haven't even started.  Today's blog chronicles our two days on the island of Hvar - my own personal version of heaven.

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

We woke up early because we had a full itinerary for the day. Our first stop was the green caves which were MUCH better than the blue ones anyway.  Mostly because they were free and you can jump off of them.  I jealously watched a bunch of guys doing backflips but my laziness won out because there was no way I was walking up the sharp rocks to get up there.

 

 

 

My lilo had been left on someone else's baot (henceforth to be sounded out in your head the way Crispy says it... "Baaaaaa-ot!") yesterday so I had to swim myself around.  Additional laziness prevented me from doing this for long so we soon tired and went on to the next stop on the itinerary... The Circle Baot Party.  This is one of the famous activities on Croatia Yacht Week.  Basically all the baots tie up to each other but instead of tying up in a line they tie up so that the baots create a circle.

Then everyone dives into the middle of the circle on their lilos and parties.  It's AWESOME.  Only problem... you have to get there really early in order to get in on the circle because once it's created it's very difficult to add baots.  Luckily, Kukar is the coolest skipper ever and "knows" people so we were able to sneak in.  We would later find out that this was the biggest circle party ever on Yacht Week.  So big in fact that I couldn't get a very good picture so I stole some from the Yacht Week.  Breaking records bitches.

 Photo Credit: Yacht Week Website

The center of the circle was crazy... people cruising around on giant inflatables singing rugby songs while taking shots from Gumby.  NUTS.  This is also the point in the trip when JagerMan got his name as he doled out shots of Jagermeister to anyone who could stomach it.

Jagermeister makes friends and soon we found ourselves laughing with a bunch of kids from Sydney about how Yacht Week is pretty much just Sydney Spring Break since 99.9% of the people on the trip were Australians.  You try to get away from home on your holiday and then your entire home comes along!  The Sydney kids were three couples and one single guy who moving forward will be known as the Lone Ranger.  As the token single guy on their baot he was constantly being punished by the couples.  We offered up Slutty Winston for a couple rounds and when it got to him he took a huge chug only to realize that his friends had filled Winston with salt water.  Hilarious.

Eventually baots began to leave and we wanted a good spot at the marina so we raced to Palmizana, the closest marina to Hvar.  We kidnapped Lone Ranger so he could hang with some single peeps.  Turns out that is 100% not allowed.  Apparently the whole reason you have to submit your crew list to YW before you arrive is that if the Croatian Coast Guard pull your baot over and you have more or less than the people listed on the crew list the skipper gets in HUGE trouble.  Sorry Kukar!!!

Low and behold who should appear but the skipper from Vis kindly requesting his shoes back.  Whoops.  Wouldn't have stolen them if I'd known he only had one pair of shoes!  Wait a second...who only brings one pair of shoes!  We had just enough time to shower and try to be dignified before jumping in the water taxi (40 kuna round-trip so hold on to your ticket) to Hvar for the day party at Hula Hula bar which is my second favorite bar on the island.  It was only going on until dark so we had to hurry!  The water taxi into Hvar was BEAUTIFUL.

This was my second favorite dance party of the trip (the biggest occurred the next day so keep reading!).  We were all standing on our own wooden blocks singing to Million Voices, Blurred Lines, Call Me Maybe and the other trillion songs that would soon come to be the Yacht Week 2013 playlist... while being sprayed with water.  I'd been jonesing for a Hula Hula peach daiquiri pitcher since I started this trip so we each got one.  It took so long for the bartender to complete our order that he just kept giving me free shots.  It was this night that we would befriend Eggs and Hugh Jackman, two of the other skippers.  Skippers on Yacht Week are literally the best.

 

 

Once the sun went down we danced our way back towards Hvar town to my favorite place on Earth.... Kiva bar.  This bar has literally zero redeeming qualities.  It's small, loud, dark, sweaty and a pain to get a drink. Pretty much everything I look for in a bar.  And it was just how I remembered it from last summer... to my left a guy was getting a helmet shot (you take a shot in an old WWII helmet and then they bang the crap out of the helmet until you can barely stand) and to my right another guy was losing himself to the dance music wearing a unicorn head.  LOVE THIS PLACE!

Needless to say I danced it out for hours...

Inside Jokes:
Bang in a cubbyhole? I like a challenge
Babies? No! STDs?  Eh.
Sunnies Stealer!


Wednesday, July 10, 2013

My first morning feeling AWFUL.  I was wondering if I'd make it through the entire week without a hangover.  C'est la vie, I suppose.  I was feeling so awful that when the YW Crew team came by to tell us that there would be a pirate booze cruise to Hvar in the afternoon I almost yakked.  JagerMan's best friend growing up just happened to be in Hvar while we were there so they left early to go bro out in Hvar together.

That left me with Danger One and Two who spent the better part of the morning convincing me why I HAD to go on this booze cruise.  Judith finally won me over when she pointed out that the booze cruise was 100 kuna round-trip which was more or less the price of the water taxi plus a little.  She reasoned that we were going to have to get to Hvar somehow... why not on a pirate baot?  How could I argue with the genius of that?  So we decided we would go.  Kukar kindly offered to stand in line to get the tickets (there was a limited number so you had to line up for them) but before she had a chance Lead Lifesaver came by and demanded money so he could get us tickets.  Apparently Lead Skippers don't wait in lines.  BOOM.

To repay Lead Lifesaver for yet another kindness we once again covered him in body paint.  This led to us covering half the pier of people in body paint... e'erybody wanted some.  And then we skipped down to the pirate baot to get the party started.

Herein, lies the best party of the trip.  Imagine 200 people on an average sized pirate baot dancing to epic music on beautiful blue Croatian waters in the sun with all their new best friends covered in neon paint.  I attempted to capture all the mayhem via the GoPro we had bought for this trip but had just now bothered to use.  Weeks later we'd watch the footage to find mostly just shots of crotches and boobs since it had been strapped to my wrist and I'd forgotten it was on. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo Credit: Yacht Week

I did manage to capture multiple shots of Sling with his tongue out though.  Poor guy got his nickname because he'd managed to trip and fall off the baot smashing most of his left side against the baot resulting in a helicopter ride to a hospital.  Like a boss he came BACK to Yacht Week with half his upper body in a cast.  We are currently attempting to edit it into some type of viable video. 

At some point I got tired of the GoPro, traded it off to Judith and wander off to the bathroom.  On my way back I ran into a French skipper who I recognized in passing (Yacht Week is sort of like sorority rush.  You end up thinking you know someone because you've passed them multiple times but don't actually).  We chatted for a while about how his dad was in the baot business and he'd learned how to sail at the age of seven.  That is crazy.  He was skippering for the Brazilians' baot so at some point I found myself surrounded by the Brazilians.

Next thing I know they are wrapping a bracelet around my wrist explaining that the bracelet is magic.  Basically you make three knots to tie it around your wrist.  When each knot is tied you make a wish.  If you keep the bracelet on until it literally falls off your three wishes come true.  If you cut off the bracelet none of them will.  Maybe I need to amp up my wish game because two of them have already come true and I'm still wearing the bracelet.  I also didn't even need to come up with a nickname for him because the Brazilians kept chatting "High School Musical" and "Zac! Zac!" because he has the exact same haircut as Zac Efron in the HSM movies.  Hilarious.

 

 

Photo Credit: Yacht Week Website

We finally arrived at Hvar with a baot that was keeling to one side like the Titanic and jam packed into Carpe Diem, one of the best known clubs in Hvar.  To clarify, there is Carpe Diem club on the mainland and Carpe Diem club on the island.  Same club, different locations.  The Peruvians had gotten a cabana so we spent most of the afternoon running around it being ridiculous.  Skipper PBR earned his nickname that afternoon as he kept swiping my PBR truck hat off my head when I wasn't looking.  I told him he was allowed to wear it but only within the confines of the cabana.  Step outside and lose your privilege.  This just immediately made him set off running through the club. 

 

 

Eventually the Yacht Week crew was kicked out of Carpe Diem to entertain ourselves until it was time to go to the island.  You don't want to show up to the island until at least 1:30-2am so we had a long time to wander.  I convinced Lead Lifesaver, Flume, Dancey and my bao crew to go to Hello Burger for dinner.  Hello Burger has the BEST burgers especially when you've been drinking for the past six hours.  Lead Lifesaver was so far gone that he managed to embellish too much during one of his stories and accidentally smashed his lit cigarette into my wrist.  OUCH.  All those brownie points from saving us down.the.drain.

After dinner we all sort of lost track of each other because some people got too tired to wait for the island to open.  I somehow ended up on my own back at Kiva where I ran into the Lil Bros.  The Lil Bros are two adorable Sydney boys who I had befriended earlier in the trip.  They are so adorable, I dubbed them my little bros because I basically wanted to adopt them and/or steal them home in my suitcase.  They forced me to take an aggressive number of Jager shots with them.  Help.

Meanwhile Lead Lifesaver resurfaced and I realized he was wearing a completely different shirt.  Turns out he'd gone back to the baots with Kukar and Eggs only to throw up, change his shirt and steal back to Hvar.  Definition of puke and rally.  I was kind of impressed.  That was until he bought a pitcher of some tropical drink, took the seven straws out of it, threw them on the floor, and then proceeded to upend the entire drink all down his front.  So much for changing his shirt. 

I finally reached a point where I just had to go home (and I've been to Carpe Diem island before so I knew what I was missing).  I chatted with some peeps from Los Angeles on the water taxi back and then ran into the Lone Ranger (his baot was docked next to ours).  Poor kid looked hungry so we made sandwiches and then sat on the baot watching all the drunk kids come home.  There is no people-watching that can equal Yacht Week people-watching.  The highlight was Lone Ranger's skipper spending close to 45 minutes trying to make a bed out of the sail of the baot so that he could bang some chick.  She just wandered aimlessly around waiting.

Sandwiches eaten, I bid Lone Ranger adieu and hit the hay.  Long day.  Awesome day.  Not so awesome? 1200 kuna for port fees when I woke up the next day.

Inside Jokes:
"Ida Ida crushing pinjas!"
Kiss me I'm hurt!