Chapter 33: Island Hopping to Trogir.

The next morning Jake and Maria still managed to get up before the others to prepare breakfast, although they did look a bit rough around the edges after their late night. Matt and the girls did not look much better and even his parents were a little bleary-eyed.

As they were finishing breakfast, Jake gave his usual morning briefing. “Today the plan is to sail the 22 nautical miles to the little island of Otok Scedro. The wind is forecast to be from the North-East as usual, around force 4 to 5. So an easy beam reach of probably a little over 3 hours. So, we should arrive in time for lunch and as it will be quite early, I’m hoping to find a tiny bay that was recommended by another skipper. It only has room for one yacht, so we should have it to ourselves.”

“Goody!” Chloe exclaimed. “More skinny dipping!”

James and Matt looked at each other smiling. They obviously liked the idea too.

They were soon underway and had a pleasant sail with both girls managing to get their fair share of time on the helm. Matt and Jake spent time explaining the instruments to the girls. They were particularly interested in the large screen of the chartplotter and the log showing the boat speed.

As Jake had predicted, they arrived at the pretty little bay and were delighted to find that it was empty. The bay was a deep V shape, narrowing as they reversed in. Matt was on the helm with Jake on the bows, ready to drop the anchor as Maria was busy in the galley preparing lunch. The girls were left to prepare their own shorelines and had lowered the bathing platform ready. James and Georgie were sipping champagne, watching the manoeuvre and happy that the girls had become part of the crew.

Some distance from the head of the bay, Matt called out “Fifteen metres!” and Jake dropped the anchor and then laid the chain along the seabed as they continued to reverse, ever more slowly. When Matt held up his hand, Jake stopped letting out the chain and when the yacht came to a standstill, Matt shouted “Go girls!”. They quickly dived into the water and began swimming the lines ashore. Tina was the first to tie the end of the rope around a large rock, shouting “Line fixed!” closely followed by Chloe. Matt pulled the slack in from both lines and used the winches to pull the yacht back a little further. When both lines were holding nicely, he shouted to Jake who tightened the chain to leave the yacht firmly in place.

The girls stripped off their bikinis and rinsed off on the bathing platform, drying off most of the water and wrapping their towels around themselves, under their arms. They arrived in the cockpit just as Maria was serving lunch and sat down to join the others.

“This is an amazing little bay and so private” Chloe exclaimed. “There’s no room for any other boats to fit.”

“So you can skinny-dip even before it gets dark!” Matt replied.

Chloe just chuckled. That was exactly what she was thinking, and after they had let their lunch go down, they all jumped into the water, naked, to cool off and swim around the yacht. The afternoon was spent swimming, sunbathing on deck and relaxing in the cockpit under the shade of the bimini.

After dinner they sat around the cockpit table chatting. Chloe looked over to James. “So why did you change to a smaller yacht, James?”

“Well, we used to do a lot of corporate entertaining, so the extra cabins in the 90 footer meant that we could have three other couples on board. We often had my managers on board too. Anyway, as the kids grew up, we needed one cabin for Matt and his girlfriends as well as one for his sister, Rebecca and her boyfriends. Nowadays, it’s my senior managers who do most of the entertaining on their own yachts and since Rebecca moved to Australia, we only need one guest cabin for Matt and sometimes for friends.”

“Do you just sail around the Med?” Tina asked.

“Nowadays, it’s usually just in the Med and some winters the Caribbean, although not this winter as we’re going to Australia for a couple of months.”

“One year we did the Oyster Round the World Rally” Georgie added. “That was amazing!”

“Wow! I bet it was!” Chloe remarked. “I’d love to see your photos.”

“I’ve got some on my iPad, so I’ll show you later” Georgie offered.

“Did you never sail in England?” Tina asked.

“We did, for many years” James said. “I had a racing yacht based in Cowes, which is why we joined the Royal Yacht Squadron. When Matt became National Junior Laser Dinghy Champion, he was invited to join too.”

Chloe smiled “I knew about the RYS because he had to show his membership card to get us into the yacht club in Fowey, but he never mentioned about being a National Champion!”

Matt smiled too. “It must be time for night swimming!”

The girls just grinned at him and went down to the bathing platform where they took off the towels, the only garment they had been wearing throughout dinner. Matt was close behind.