Blog 031: Fog, Feasts, and Financial Cat-astrophes

Sawasdeekat, Living the Tide-and-error way.

If you recall our last thrilling instalment – a saga involving frigates playing target practice, customs officials with the moral compass of a weathervane in a hurricane, and an engine that abandoned its post with the cowardice of a ship’s rat – you’ll appreciate that our arrival in Slovenia felt less like a nautical triumph and more like a staggered, wheezing collapse over a finish line that had probably been moved several times for a laugh. But let’s review:

We left Uvala Polja not with a proud roar, but with the resigned sigh of our one remaining good engine. The starboard side purred, a steady, reliable hum. The port side, however, continued to sound like a bag of spanners being enthusiastically thrown down a metal staircase, so that was not being used. And as if the gods of the sea hadn’t already had their fun, they decided to turn down the lights. Enter: The Fog.

This wasn't your common-or-garden, pea-souper, London-specific fog. This was a solid, woolly, sensory-deprivation-tank of a fog. The kind where you stretch out your arm half-expecting your hand to have been neatly amputated by the sheer density of it all. We slowed to a cautious crawl.

My role? Captain of the listing vessel.

Pookie’s role? well, our own oracle took her post. Forget a carved wooden nymph; we had a live one. Perched on the bow, the radio headset giving her the aura of a modern, slightly irritated deity, Pookie became the living embodiment of our Sawasdeekat's spirit. I half expected her to turn, her voice echoing with the wisdom of the ages, not just to shout ‘STOP!’ but to cryptically advise, ‘Heath, the sea serpent to port is not pleased with your course correction.’ Much like Hera’s figurehead in Jason and the Argonauts, she was our divine counsel in the mortal realm of fog banks and faulty engines, though her prophecies were chiefly concerned with the proximity of large, hard things we ought to avoid.

When Stop really doesn’t.

A word on “STOP”. In a catamaran with only one engine, “stop” is a theoretical concept, a nautical myth. When you only have one engine, what actually happens is a clumsy, involuntary pirouette. Imagine a sumo wrestler attempting ballet on a greased platform. That would be us. We wouldn’t halt; we’d simply begin rotating mournfully, a cumbersome, overweight ballerina at the mercy of a single, unbalanced thrust.

After a day of this nerve-shredding, silent-movie suspense, we finally dropped anchor in Slovenia. I was shattered, a man composed entirely of frayed nerves and caffeine. But we’d made it. Croatia was behind us.

And let us not speak of Croatia’s parting gift (OK I will then): which is its truly innovative maritime hospitality model. While most of the Mediterranean welcomes a weary sailor to a quiet bay with the gentle lap of waves and a stunning sunset, Croatia has perfected the art of the ambush. It is the only country I have ever encountered that views a secluded, picturesque anchorage not as a free gift of nature, but as a pop-up restaurant where you haven’t yet seen the bill.

Their system is diabolically clever. You will sail for hours, find the perfect, idyllic cove—the kind that deserves to be on a postcard. You’ll drop anchor, crack open a bottle of something local and crisp, and Pookie will have just plated up a masterpiece of seared scallops. That is the precise moment he appears. Not at 3 p.m. when you’re sober and pragmatic. Oh no. At 8:47 p.m., when you’re sun-kissed, wine-happy, and your defences are lower than our port engine’s oil pressure.

A putt-putt sound announces the arrival of the Water Tax Collector. He’ll sidle up in his little dinghy, a clipboard in hand, looking for all the world like a particularly miserable water nymph sent to shatter your peace. He isn’t selling fresh bread or inviting you to a village festival. He is there to present an invoice for the sheer audacity of having stopped moving in his nation’s water. It’s a mooring fee for… well, for existing in a beautiful place. It’s like being charged by the air for breathing a particularly nice scent.

Yes, other places have park fees for specific, renowned natural reserves. But Croatia? Croatia seems to believe every single droplet of its Adriatic sea, every rock and pine tree on its coastline, is a ticketed event… and the man in the dinghy is the bouncer. Leaving Croatia felt not just like a geographical change, but an escape from a stunningly beautiful, open-air subscription service we never signed up for. Slovenia’ blissful ignorance of our paperwork was a blessed relief

The next day brought a short hop across the bay to Monfalcone, our promised land of repair. And what a sight it was. The fog had vanished, replaced by a warm, generous sun. The water was calm. And our welcoming committee? A stately flock of swans, gliding past as if to say, “Yes, chaps, the nonsense is over. You’ve arrived.”

Fun Fact: Monfalcone is known as the "City of Shipbuilding". Its mighty Fincantieri shipyard has built some of the world's most luxurious liners. So, our little Sawasdeekat was essentially a minnow pulling into the workshop where whales are born. The irony of our broken-down catamaran resting in the shadow of such titans was not lost on us.

The town itself was a delight. Restaurants that understood food as more than mere fuel! Wine that didn’t taste like vinegar with ambition! We wandered, we ate, we remembered what joy felt like. We even had time for tech disasters – my 8Tb NAS drive gave up the ghost, a digital heart attack. I took it as a sign from the universe and upgraded to a monstrous 16TB. Well, you never know. Pookie’s recipe videos and my drone footage of various coastlines aren’t going to store themselves.

But the real patient was Sawasdeekat herself. After nearly six months languishing in a Montenegrin marina, she was looking… tired. When they hoisted her out of the water, the truth was revealed. Our anodes, those unsung sacrificial heroes whose job it is to be corroded instead of our vital metal parts, were not so much ‘eroded’ as ‘virtually evaporated’. They were mere wafers, ghostly outlines of their former selves.

The hull had a few battle scars – minor chips and scrapes earned from our various misadventures. Ever the frugal adventurers, we ordered some copper undercoat to play amateur boat surgeons and touch her up ourselves. Our list of jobs for the marina staff grew: new holes to be drilled for the passerelle (the official term for our gangplank, which in Montenegro had required a climb of Matahorn-level complexity just to get ashore), new lines (that’s ‘rope’ to you land-lubbers), engines to be serviced, toilet Y-valves replaced (a glamorous job, I assure you), welding on new flag poles and those all-important washing line hoops for our Atlantic crossing.

It was a full spa day. A full, expensive spa day. But the big ticket item, the ticking time bomb, remained: the saildrives. But before we could face that music, a different siren call summoned us away. The UK was calling.

Pookie, our award-winning culinary siren, had been invited to Touchwood shopping mall to host a food event. And host she did. It wasn't a success; it was a sensation. Footfall skyrocketed.

The mall management probably erected a small statue of her in a back office. Such was the reverberating success that a local restaurant, Alioli, immediately invited her to do a full-blown restaurant takeover. She did, for an oversubscribed, adoring audience. Which, as is the way with these things, led to another invitation to repeat the task at another restaurant. For those who think our life is one long sunset cocktail, I invite you to try coordinating a kitchen takeover with a jet-lagged, brilliant chef. It’s not all piña coladas and sunsets.

I, too, was not idle. My other life as a director of a care home group needed attention. Bablake House was undergoing a massive 12-bedroom extension, a project nearing completion that required my snagging eye to ensure it would not only be stunning but would meet the exacting standards of the CQC. Our UK social diary was a whirlwind; every slot filled with family, friends, and obligations. It was glorious and exhausting. And within a week, we were on a plane back to Italy, our hearts and passports full, ready to face the doom loop music waiting for us in Monfalcone.

And what a symphony it was. A concerto in the key of Bankrupt.

The marina technicians met us with faces of practised, solemn sadness, likely masking inner glee at the commission on the horizon. The diagnosis was in, and it was terminal. Our 22-year-old SD20 sail-drives were not just poorly; they were maritime history. Beyond repair. Caput. The only solution? To rip them out and install brand new, state-of-the-art, eye-wateringly expensive SD60s.

The cost? Let’s just say it had a lot of zeros. Over €30,000 worth of zeros. The timeline? A special order from the manufacturer. Two to three months. Our summer sailing season was suddenly evaporating before our eyes, along with our life savings.

We had no choice with the boat. But we had a choice in how we reacted. We could curl up in a fetal position and weep. We could rage at the unfairness of it all. Or… we could cook.

Pookie chose cooking.

Thus began the Great Culinary Consolation. A distraction tactic of magnificent, delicious proportions. Our tiny galley kitchen became a Michelin-starred theatre of solace. She cooked a myriad of dishes every day; fragrant curries, delicate pastas, sumptuous roasts. We ate our feelings. And our feelings were delicious.

We also explored. We hired a car – because nothing says ‘stranded sailor’ like the unencumbered freedom of a Fiat Panda – and we went to Venice. But in Venice, we upgraded from four wheels to something far more glamorous: we hired a classic retro looking motoscafo.

This wasn't just any boat; it was a masterpiece of Italian craftsmanship—a sleek, varnished mahogany speedboat with that iconic curved wooden stern, its slats gleaming in the sun as we puttered away from the dock. For a few glorious hours, we weren't stranded sailors; we were 1960s movie stars, slicing through the waterways of Venice in a timeless symbol of la dolce vita, the throaty purr of its engine a far cry from the sickly, clanging sputter of our own. Fun Fact: Venice is built on millions of wooden piles driven into the clay and mud of the lagoon. The lack of oxygen in the water petrifies the wood, making it hard as stone. The entire city is essentially standing on a submerged forest.

It was, as ever, breathtaking. A dream of water and stone. We wandered, losing ourselves in its impossible beauty, around every small corner a new wonder. We took the boat to the island of Burano, a riot of impossibly colourful fishermen’s houses, a place that looks like it’s been coloured in by a child with a brand new box of crayons. The vibrant colours of Burano’s houses weren't just for show; they served a practical purpose. The bright, distinct colours helped fishermen identify their homes from far out in the foggy lagoon.

We had lunch at the legendary Trattoria al Gatto Nero. Upon hearing the name of our own award-winning chef, the owner, despite being fully booked, performed a miracle. A table materialised, right on the water’s edge. His father, a maestro from the kitchen, came out personally to serve us a dish, beaming with pride. It was a moment of pure, unadulterated foodie respect, a meeting of passionate minds across language barriers. They were wonderful, proud people, and we waltzed around the small courtyards afterwards, bellies and hearts full, gazing out along the canals that stitch that stunning place together.

So there we are. Stranded, but not defeated. Poorer, but richer in experience. Waiting for parts, making the best of a bad lot, and eating very well indeed.

Please join us next time when we execute a complex escape plan back to Malta, take an unplanned holiday in Croatia (where Pookie gets recognised yet again!), and spend a magical few days with my sister and her boyfriend at the breathtaking Plitvice Lakes, before we once again answer the siren call of the UK.

Until then, fair winds and following seas… even if we’re currently experiencing them from the deck of a stationary catamaran and the driver’s seat of a Fiat Panda.

Heath (& Pookie!)