The Yacht Week Croatia Black Route 2013 - The Finale (Solta and Split)

The final pages of the Yacht Week blog including our last night in Split to attend the first ever, ULTRA Europe event.  What are the odds I book this trip in December of last year and just HAPPEN to pick the week that ULTRA is in Split, Croatia?  Cray.

Thursday, July 11, 2013

We left Hvar first thing in the morning and sailed for Solta Island so that we could get a good spot.  This is the day where the Red and Black Routes join together and create a baot raft over over 100+ baots.  And then we raged.  The majority of the day was spent wandering from baot to baot drinking with the friends we'd made over the last few days, jumping into the water and swimming around on lilos.  The skippers blew up a giant inflatable so that people could jump off the top of the catamaran, land on the inflatable and go flying into the air.

Photo Credit: Yacht Week Website

 

 

 

 

Photo Credit: Yacht Week Website

It was a day for making new friends including RaverSunnies who came over to say "Hi" to Kukar only to be harassed by us insisting that he sit and stay awhile (with a complimentary beer of course).  As night descended our skipper friends meandered over.  Eggs' poor puppy dog eyes begged for some leftover pasta because he'd eaten at the restaurant and apparently it was terrible.  Our pasta got high marks!  Hugh Jackman and RaverSunnies were introduced to Winston and soon we broke out the glow in the dark wristbands.

 

 

After pre-partying on the baot we headed to shore. You walk along the baots to get to the one catamaran that has a wooden plank connecting it to shore which is why it is good to get there early (less baots to get across).  At the top of a bunch of wooden steps is a three-story restaurant/bar called Sismis Cocktail Bar.  During the day you can also order food for pick-up from them or eat at the restaurant.

I was starting to feel a little sad and reminiscent since this is really our last night with everyone because tomorrow the people who have tickets to ULTRA will end up separating from the Yacht Week group.  I spent a solid thirty minutes in a hug-fest with the Lil Bros from Sydney.  Unfortunately I realized too late that I never got last names or contact info!  Hopefully I see them again someday!

As per usual I ran into the Canadians and gave #5 a huge hug that lifted him off the ground.  This immediately made all his friends giggle so I decided to pick them all up too.  Bashful was fairly easy to lift but then I turned to BeachBoy who stands at close to 6'4."  He just smiled down at me while all the other guys told me it was okay and I should give up.  I bent my knees, grabbed BeachBoy around the buttcheeks and not only lifted him into the air but did a little twirl with him too.  HAH.

At this point I had yet again lost track of most of my crew probably because a lot of them were tired.  I started to walk back to the baot when I ran into Kukar.  We had a lovefest too.  She really has been the greatest addition to our baot and the trip.  Love that girl.

A fairly chill night coming off of Hvar but I didn't mind getting a good night's sleep.


Friday, July 12, 2013

We woke up early for the six or so hour trip back to Kremik and decided fairly early on that we weren't going to do the Regatta because we needed to get back for ULTRA.  Basically the last day of Yacht Week in Croatia everyone gets dressed in costume and races each other back to the harbor using the sailing skills you supposedly learned throughout the week.  It was 2-3 knot winds that day so it would've taken us FOREVER to get back so we opted out.  Plus we kind of just wanted to lazily lie on the front of the baot and sleep instead of getting all dressed up in our costumes.  For your enjoyment I've posted some examples of costumes from other people who did do the Regatta.

 

Photo Credit: Yacht Week

We arrived in Kremik early which was nice because it meant a shorter line for the gas station.  Gas for the baot ended up being about 160 kuna each.  The good news is that RaverSunnies had helped us snag a hostel in Split (the entire city was sold out thanks to ULTRA) so that we could just crash there after ULTRA instead of taking the 1.5 hour bus ride back to the baot just to disembark tomorrow morning at 9am for another 2 hour taxi ride to the airport.  The only unfortunate part is the hostel was like 55 Euro per person.  Not cheap.

The next few hours were spent cleaning the baot and getting rid of a lot of our stuff so that we wouldn't have to cart it back to the U.S.  We also had our final crew dinner (unfortunately sans Kukar) at the lone restaurant at Kremik which was delicious but took forever. We finished just in time to grab one of the few buses leaving for ULTRA.  It was sad to say goodbye to Kala... she'd been a great baot.

The bus ride (70 kuna per person round-trip although we were only taking it one way) to Split was absolutely outrageous.  We obviously had brought the alcohol we still had left with us on the bus (about 12 beers and a full bottle of Jack Daniels).  We knew we weren't going to spend much time drinking once we got to Split so we downed the beers and then started passing the bottle of Jack.

Somehow we managed to end up on the top of the bus with all the crazy Peruvians and Brazilians.  They managed to chant and sing every single reggaeton song on my Internat'l Spotify playlist which was hilarious.  Most of the skippers we knew ended up on the top level with us as well.  This was the moment when the French skipper, "High School Musical," would get his name.  As I'd mentioned he was the skipper for the Brazilians so he ended up on the top level with us and was forced to take pulls of Jack Daniels just like everyone else.  The only person who didn't look like they were having fun was Eggs whose sad puppy dog eyes earned him a few extra beers.  We also got to know two new skippers, Mac and Mr. McGregor, who were delighted by the offer to take pulls of Jack.

Upon arrival at ULTRA, we lucked out that we were with skippers so we didn't have to wait in the special Yacht Week line to get our tickets.  Yacht Week had VIP tickets that gave access to their VIP lounge section at ULTRA which was a huge bonus.  We had our own bathrooms and our own bar which reduced the amount of lines.

We then piled into two cars to go to the hostel to drop our stuff and pre-party for a few hours.  RaverSunnies would get his nickname because he pounced on Judith's blinking sunglasses begging to wear them and promising he wouldn't lose them at ULTRA.  I would find out the next day that he had dutifully kept track of them, returning them to Judith at the end of the night only to have her bestow ownership upon him due to good behavior.  He was thrilled.

Once everyone had taken a sizable number of Winstons and decked themselves in glow bands we walked back to ULTRA.  Within two seconds of entering I once again lost my entire crew (do you see a pattern here?) and ran smack into High School Musical.  We ended up dancing for hours to awesome EDM DJs before leaving to find pizza.  By the time we left I had finally gotten him to say "yeah, yeah."  He despised that phrase.  For my first time at ULTRA all I can say is...INSANE.

Photo Credit: Yacht Week

 

Inside Jokes:
"Yeah Yeah Favorite!"
"Oui, oui"
"Only two wishes left"
"It's 4:30am! The bus leaves at 5!"
Crazy Belgian


Saturday, July 13, 2013

Clearly everything that could've gone wrong last night did.  I remember JagerMan coming back some time in the night and then much much later Judith arriving.  When I woke up at 9am, there was still no sign of Crispy.  Turns out she couldn't for the life of her figure out how to get back to our impossible hostel so she'd stayed at a hotel with a bunch of people she met wandering ULTRA alone.  I was just thankful she was alive and unharmed.  Just goes to show that you have to be a tough cookie to handle Yacht Week.

We all managed to make it to the airport, although Crispy and I would be delayed just long enough to miss our connection in Frankfurt resulting in us staying overnight in the most boring town in history and not making it home until Sunday.  So much for having a day to recover!  Lufthansa did do a beautiful job of taking care of us though.  It was a super easy process to rebook our flight for the next day, immediate shuttle to the hotel, dinner included in the price, etc and shuttle back the next day.  Love that German precision!

Looking back after being home for exactly a month I can tell you that I learned a lot about myself and my friends from that week.  It was a challenging trip but also an entertaining and enlightening one.  I enjoyed myself so much that we've already booked Yacht Week British Virgin Islands for NYE so that's the best review I can give - I'm doing it again.

Here are some of my overall recommendations for those that are thinking about doing it:

1. The majority of people on the trip are 21-25 so you will likely have the best time if you fall into that age range
2. The best situation would be to get about 8 people together, split in half and get two baots and fill the rest of the spots with randoms.  It ensures you have your friends but meet new people too.
3. Select people to go on your baot that:

• can go all day all night forever (obviously)
• are probably single (tend to be more social and reduces the "this is our room" mentality since you all end up sleeping on top of each other)
• aren't private (again there is no such thing as personal space on the baot)
• are no drama (this one is super important - you can't take sh*t seriously or you will find plenty of things to complain about)
• are capable (as you can tell from my  blog there are often times on Yacht Week that you find yourself alone because everyone got drunk, hooked up, bailed, blah blah, so you have to be able to make it home on your own)

Stick to the above and I guarantee you this will be one of the best weeks of your life.  It's only been a month but many of these people I know I will see again because of the connections we've made.  We've already had Auz visit NYC and RaverSunnies is coming on BVI as our skipper.  Hope everyone reading this has the opportunity to experience this once (before it gets shutdown haha).

Bon Voyage!

The Yacht Week Croatia Black Route 2013 - It Begins (Frapa, Vis, Komiza)

Alright, time to begin the blog you've all been waiting for.  Just to provide some sort of a timeline/itinerary so you can follow along below is a list of the day and what island/port we were at.  We were on the Black Route which in my opinion is better than Red.  Mostly because you get to Solta first so you get a better spot (that's the one day that Black and Red route meetup).  Today's blog covers the first three nights.

July 6 - Board boat / Night in Frapa on the mainland

July 7 - Night in Vis Town on Vis Island

July 8 - Night in Komiza on Vis Island

July 9 - Night in Palmizana (closest anchor to Hvar Town)

July 10 - Night in Palmizana (closest anchor to Hvar Town)

July 11 - Night in Solta

July 12 - Night in Kremik Harbor (or in our case Split cuz of ULTRA)

July 13 - Normally we would disembark from the boat this day but we were already in Split

Photo Credit: Yacht Week Website

continued from my Split blog post...

Saturday, July 6, 2013

Work up this morning with money stuck to my ass... must have been a good night?  I then exited my bed to find a scene from the Hangover greeting me in our Split apartman.  Some weird goo on the chair, some other weird goo on the ceiling, glow in the dark paint up ended on the table, a 4 foot blowup schlong abandoned on the floor.  Is this a vacation or a bachelorette party?  Almost immediately after surveying the damage I heard a knock on the door.  Keep in mind I am wearing Judith's shirt that says "I came to party and f--- bitches."  I open the door to a small Croatian woman telling me that it's time to check out.  I convince her to give us 20 minutes, shut and lock the door, and start yelling at the crew to get moving.  Forty minutes later I'm fairly sure we will get our deposit back and we wander down to the boardwalk to determine what we are going to do until it's time to head to Frapa Marina to get our boat.

The six of us collapse under a palm tree mostly on top of each other to try and avoid the hot sun beating down on us.  Ryan Reynolds manages to locate an gelato shop that sells a "whiskey" flavor.  Turns out it actually has whiskey in it so he immediately dumps it on me to finish.  Yes, I do.  Meanwhile, we are carrying around the remaining alcohol from the previous night and Ost. gets the great idea to have people draw cards from a deck and if you get the joker you have to take a shot of vodka.  What happens?  My first turn... I get a joker.  FML.  We sit around half sleeping wasting away an hour until it's time to jump in a taxi.

Inside Jokes:
Do you like ears?
"I just get used for my body"

Turns out Frapa Marina is FOREVER from Split and ended up costing us 600 kuna.  I proved how worthless I was at math when I tried to tell everyone how much that was per person in US dollars.  As soon as we arrived it started POURING rain, we couldn't figure out where in the marina we were supposed to meet.  Once we did find the meeting location we couldn't find our skipper and no one would tell us what was going on so we just decided to buy drinks and sit around until someone came looking for us.

Finally, our Swedish skipper, Kukar, found us and helped us get our wristbands and fill out the paperwork that pretty much says Yacht Week isn't responsible for all the punishment we were about to do to our brains and bodies.  Her nickname was created from the term, krossa kukar.  I will let you ask a Swedish speaker what that means.  I recommend standing far enough away that you don't get slapped.  Synonym - "crushing pinjas"

We would told to grocery shop at Frapa Marina before we boarded a bus to Kremik Marina where our boat was anchored (this was super annoying that we had to go to two different harbors.  Yacht Week if you read this I would rather have just chilled in Kremik).  Turns out we DIDN'T need to buy groceries here... you can buy them in Kremik.  We spent 1000 kuna total between the four of us.

Here's what we bought and my thoughts on each:

• sliced ham - pretty much the only thing I ate the entire trip
• cheese - pretty much the only other thing I ate
• pasta/pasta sauce - came in SO handy for the few group dinners we managed to have towards the end of the trip but in general no interest in making food just eating it.  Also buy more pasta sauce then you think you need.
• tuna - ate this too although check the labels.  The first one we opened up had beans and other things mixed in.  Although it did provide for a running YW joke... "Mexican tuna!"
• beers - duh..
• ice - for the beers.  Anytime you see ice on the trip buy all of it.
• red wine - a really good idea for when the beers get warm, you have an alternative
• hard alcohol - buy something you are willing to take pulls of straight because your mixers will eventually get warm (hello Jack Daniels)
• mixers - for while you have ice
• yogurt - bought it and I never ate it but I think others did.  Easy solution to breakfast
• eggs - bought these the first day and they were never used... funny joke later on this one
• bread
• bagel crisps - amazing because you can eat by themselves or with tuna or cheese, etc
• milk - probably kind of pointless but we did get cereal
• cereal

We then waited forever for the bus to Kremik which was 30 kuna per person. My recommendation if you have to do this is to split your group in half.  Half of your make sure you make it on the boat, with your skipper, while the others throw all your stuff under the bus.  That way worst case the first group can get the boat in order while waiting for the others.  We magically managed to get everyone on the same bus.

We boarded the boat on arrival, selected rooms (JagerMan and I took the back two smaller rooms that have ZERO head room and Judith and Crispy took the front room that was slightly bigger with more head space) and then immediately began decking out the boat with fun stuff, our shocker flag and the Xmas lights, while our skipper boated us BACK to Frapa Marina for the first of the Yacht Week parties.  Again this is where I get irritated that we had to go Frapa - Kremik - Frapa.  I get that some marinas don't want us there because we are loud but this was just a major pain.  They should've had us check in at Frapa while the skippers brought the boats from Kremik.

The boat was AWESOME.  We had so much room and it looked brand new.  I later learned this boat would cost like $300,000 to buy.

 
Regardless the sail to Frapa was gorgeous and our flag looked AWESOME.

 

We spent our first night teaching the Colombians on the boat next to us how to "Winston" (Winston is my flabongo.  He got more action on the trip than the rest of Yacht Week combined.  We soon became known as the Flabongo Boat).  They were very intrigued.

From there we went to the club where the Yacht Week party was being held.  I immediately lost all of my crew, got pushed by some random dude and ended up at the bar fairly drunk talking to some Croatian guy who kept blowing cigarette smoke in my face while repeating the only word he knew in English.. "Kiss kiss?"  No. Thank. You.

I clearly wasn't having it so I wandered back to the boat for lack of a better idea.  Thank god for the Xmas lights or I never would've made it home.  Hmm not a great start to Yacht Week.  Maybe I came in with too high of expectations?

On a side note - the fee for one night at port in Frapa was 600 kuna (that's just ridiculous).


Sunday, July 7, 2013

We left Frapa early and sailed six hours to Vis Town on the island of Vis.  Definitely glad I randomly brought Dramamime because turns out I was a little queasy out on the boat.  Today was the day that Crispy would inherit her name as she managed to burn the crap out of herself by misjudging when to finally apply sunscreen.  It's also cool because you can stop whenever you want to jump into the water and have a lazy swim in the middle of the ocean.  The view of Croatia from the water just can't be beat.

Upon arrival in Vis, there are two option for the boat.  You can dock at the marina (pros - get electricity in the outlets, AC and showers and don't have to pay for water taxi; cons - more expensive port fee) OR you can dock out in the bay (pros - all the cool kids do it, cheaper; cons - less amenities and have to take a water taxi to the boat).

 

 

Photo Credit: Yacht Week Website

We opted for the bay (partly because the marina was full) and it turns out it was the far better decision.  This option involves tying all the boats up next to each other in a line, like a raft, with the backs of the boats all facing the same way.  The cool thing about this is that everyone hangs out behind their boat in their floatie so you start mingling with people on the other boats.

This particular day we ended up next to Skipper PBR and his crew of Pervians, Australians and a Texan.  One of the Peruvians, Sling, and I spent the majority of the afternoon trying to play beer pong using the blow-up beer pong rafts we brought with us.  It was IMPOSSIBLE.  The tiniest wave and you'd miss your shot.  Not to mention you are trying to balance on a lilo the whole time.  We also got to know the two Aussies, Dancey (named for her ability to find herself completely alone on the dancefloor and not care) and Flume (for her love of exceptional Aussie DJs).

I also of course introduced them to Winston.  Sling was suspicious at first before seeing Winston in person.  I had said, "I came home early last night thanks to Winston."  Sling took this to mean that Winston was another handheld product one would use if they came home from a club early.  Once he saw Winston though this hilarious miscommunication was immediately rectified.  Come on now!  Around this time I managed to lose my lilo which was retrieved by Lead Lifesaver (thus earning him his nickname).

A little backstory on Lead Lifesaver... when we first booked our boat we were told that LL would be our skipper.  We, of course, Facebook stalked him and were on the verge of making hilarious crew T-shirts with his face on them when we found out another boat had requested him and we were switched.  Please note, Kukar is the shit (she crushes pingas like a pro) but it helps explain why we were already loving this kid before we'd even been properly introduced to him.  Needless to say he would come to spend a lot of time on our boat.  Cuz we rock.  This is also a good point in the story to tell you that you can request a skipper if you want. 

We partied on the boats for the next few hours while we did a shower rotation.  Winston made friends with the only other flabongo on the trip, Frederick.  I would later come to learn from Frederick's owner that he was stolen in the night later in the trip.  Thank god most nights Winston slept in my room.  I can't imagine the devastation if he'd been kidnapped!

Next we headed inland for a quick stop in the Swedish boat filled with Kukar's friends before we went to the Yacht Week sponsored party.  This one was set up in an old castle; it was SO cool.  The dance floor is in the middle with stadium style rows of grass covered in tables that you can reserve.  As mostly girls we didn't bother to reserve a table but if you are a boat of dudes I suggest this is the second best party on the trip to get a table if you want.

 

 Photo Credit: Yacht Week Website

Unfortunately, the Yacht Week gods were against me again this night because within 30 minutes of dancing both my flipflops exploded.  I will reiterate... Girls DO NOT bring cute flipflops.  Bring functional flipflops.  Or suffer the wrath of the thousands of pieces of glass littered all over this place.  Within minutes my feet were completely cut up putting me in a terrible mood.  I also managed to lose my friends again, introduce myself to one of the skippers in an attempt to be friendly only to be asked point blank if "I wanted to makeout" and then immediately ditched thanks to the look of shock on my face, and finally end up alone.  Man this sucks!

Unsure of how to get back without ripping my feet apart even more I manage to look up and see a skipper from some other yacht company dancing on one of the wooden "boxes" littering the dance floor.  But the main thing I noticed was that he looked fairly strong and had shoes.  I kindly pointed out that I would be needing his shoes and a piggyback ride to my boat.  Winning.

Inside Jokes:
"Hello Guy"


Monday, July 8, 2013

Woke up to some PAINFUL feet and a questionable attitude so I spent the majority of the morning and afternoon berating myself.  I think I was just expecting that you show up at Yacht Week and make a ton of lifelong friends and have the best time ever (like college).  I wasn't really expecting everyone to just get really wasted and suck face with whatever random person happened to be next to them at the time. The bad mood was compounded by the fact that someone had forgotten to lock the shower door in place so it had gotten lose and locked us out of the only bathroom with a shower.

We left fairly early so that we could take advantage of sailing to the Submarine Bunker and the Blue Caves before making our way to Komiza (the next anchor point).  The Submarine Bunker was pretty cool.  You climb up along the side of the bunker to the top and then jump off into the water.  It's supposedly 53 feet (from what I could find on Google) but it sure seems higher.  The trick is to just step off the side rather than jumping to ensure you hit the water in as straight a line as possible.  I tried to get both arms in but managed to only secure my left leaving my right to hit the water hard enough to make it smart for a couple of hours.  Judith ended up much worse off.  When she hit the water she somehow ruptured the inside of her mouth resulting in a ton of blood and a bruised cheek for half the rest of Yacht Week.  She was TROOPER.
 

 

Then we tried to go to the Blue Caves but the motor for our dinghy was broken so we had to row in which took like 30 minutes.  We got to the mouth of the cave only to find out it costs money.  Screw that.  The day was just not turning out as planned!

Finally we arrived at Komiza and once again decided to tie up in the bay.

 

 

 Photo Credit: Yacht Week Website

I immediately retreated to the water to make friends and cool off.  At one point a guy swam nearby so I introduced myself.  BeachBoy then introduced me to his boat of Canadian friends.  I sat next to #5 and Bashful and was in the midst of introducing myself to them when they said, "Oh, we know you."  Uh oh.  Bashful then goes on to explain that they had met me last night at the castle party.  Apparently I had walked up and they had said hello only for me to say, "I lost my shoes so I guess I'll stand here and talk to you guys."  Hahahaha THAT came out wrong.  I laughingly apologized for coming off as a total "B" pointing out that I was miserable at that point.  So, we started over and before long were having a great time.

Once again Winston made an appearance and tried gin for the first time.  Not sure he liked it.  The Canadians also explained that they knew who we were (the shocker boat girls).  Apparently our reputation proceeds us...

We continued to make our rounds to the other boats, introducing ourselves and making funs.  THIS is the Yacht Week I'd been looking for.  We meet some kids from Chicago kids who apparently had a girl on their boat who had been sexually harassed the previous night and when she said something to police they ignored her resulting in her punching the cop and being thrown in jail.  Apparently this was the THIRD mishap on their boat and their skipper had screamed at them, said he wanted a new boat, and then quit.  We played football until it was time to get ready for dinner and going out.

If you want you can buy water taxi tickets in advance (40 kuna each).  Lucky for us, Lead Lifesaver had fixed our shower, earning him another brownie point and the luck of us using his body as a canvas for our glow-in-the-dark paint.  Covered in paint we all jumped in the water taxi for our first dinner out together.  I ordered carbonara which was awful while almost everyone else got pizza which was apparently pretty good.  I'm telling you... the only things you should ever order in Croatia are rumpsteak and pizza.

From there we went to the Yacht Week sponsored party which this time was at a open-air club on the beach.  It was a little dead because we got there too early (I recommend showing up to this one around 2am) but we didn't care because we were a three woman dance party (YagerMan slept it off this night).  We ordered the "Special" which is some crazy blue drink that comes in a pitcher with a bunch of straws.

Photo Credit: Yacht Week Website

Tonight would be the night that BeachBoy earned his nickname...after wandering off with a lady and getting caught in the act.  Bwahahaha.  He was not amused.  I also managed to run into the same skipper from last night.  "Mr. Makeout" was just as dodgy as before.  Ick.

We spent the rest of the night dancing like idiots with #5, Bashful and BeachBoy.  It was the start of a beautiful hat-sharing relationship with #5 (his lucky number is 5 which was stitched onto the beloved hat) that pretty much involved #5 cautioning me not to lose his favorite hat, me telling him to chill, him not chilling and then eventually high-fiving me after three people tried to steal it and I refused to give it up.  Come on man where's the trust!

 

Bashful would also receive his nickname this night as I kept taking the bottom of the boys' shirts and looping them through the neckhole to create a manly bikini look.  Bashful kept pulling his back down which just encouraged me.  

And then Crispy caught sight of the t-shirt fun and her claws came out.  My shirt sadly was the object of her attention resulting in it going from a tank top to a vest.  At this point #5 pointed out that if you are going to wear a ripped shirt you might as well make it into a cape!

We FINALLY tired ourselves out around 5am and started the long walk back to the marina to catch the water taxi.  Along the way we started skipping yelling "Yeah! Yeah!" until some local Croatian boys walked up to us asking me, "Why do you keep yelling 'eggs'?"  Turns out that "ja-ja" (pronounced "yeah-yeah") means "eggs" in Croatian.  When we got back to the boat I confirmed this.  Hilarious.

Our night ended scandalously with a little skinny dipping.  Unfortunately, Crispy had developed a strange accent from spending so much time with foreigners and kept yelling "Come party on our ba-ot!" at the top of her lungs.  This resulted in a large group of people coming to our boat to join the swimming and finally Judith and JagerMan coming topside to tell them to get off the boat.  What a mess!  It would also be the introduction of the word "Baot" into our "extensive" Yacht Week vocabulary to go with "Yeah-yeah," "No-no" and "Shocker!!!!"

Inside Jokes:
Step, Step, Step, Splash!
The 25 minute swim 
Skipper Tanks
Weeping
What are you doing on the beach?

Overall this day was a huge success and had me feeling like finally I was on the Yacht Week I'd expected.  I was looking forward to the next day when we would sail for Hvar... my favorite island in quite possibly the world.

Stay tuned!