Croatian#6 Soledad Sailing Challenge 2025 - TROUBLES ON CORFU
August 29, 2025 4:40 in the morning
Somewhere in the open sea of the Adriatic between Albania and Montenegro
From Lefkada, early in the morning, freshly showered with full fuel tanks, with the wind, of course, as always, exclusively at the bow, we set sail for the next destination - Corfu.
We sailed to the northern part of Corfu, to the bay of Kassiopi, a total of 74 nautical miles. We arrived almost completely without starting the engine.
As usual, when we arrived Soledad was already anchored in the middle of the bay, watching the Italians throw their anchors around as if on stage in a theater.
We dropped anchor around 7 p.m. in a bay that was already fairly crowded — and then it turned into a real circus once the Italian charter boats started rolling in. For those who don’t know — we boat owners just can’t help it, we always look at charter crews with a dose of skepticism.
It’s always the same scene: the girl in a bikini struggling with the anchor, the guy yelling at her from the helm, she’s raising it up then dropping it down until he storms forward to argue — and then they move to another spot, only to repeat the whole show again.
Having been that girl on the bow countless times myself, I feel a deep sense of empathy… but also relief, since that job is now in the capable hands of Özgür and Nikša. Currently, besides cabin crew duties, my only task is to raise and lower the ladder. There’s a little trick with those ladders that only I can handle with ease. I mastered it back when we first bought the boat — after we’d already accepted our fate that the ladder was probably broken. I figured it out out of sheer desperation, just so I wouldn’t have to haul myself onto the stern like a stranded whale every time I climbed out of the sea.
This is definitive proof that a man in desperation is capable of utilizing certain brain synapses that they otherwise surely could not.
On Corfu, we stumbled upon an exceptionally good spot by sheer luck, an excellent safe anchorage where our anchor settled nicely into the sandy bottom, with the added bonus of several restaurants and a shop right on the shore.
UNUSUAL ENCOUNTER
Apart from the Italian flag boats we hadn’t come across until now, while I was setting up the ladder I also came face-to-face with a giant shrimp — the kind I’d only seen on a dinner plate in recent years.
She was floating on the surface, so at first it felt like she had jumped straight off the plate into the sea — not the other way around. Naturally, my first instinct was to put her back where she really belonged: on the plate. Nikša agreed that it was the only logical step we should take and took out the bucket to try to catch it. Nikša agreed it was the only logical course of action and grabbed a bucket to try and catch it.
But since these sea shrimps still have the inconvenient habit of moving — and rather quickly, too — our mission failed.
So we decided, as always, that we’ll stick to catching seafood with euros, not with bait. Much simpler that way.
TROUBLE BY DINGHY
From day one we’ve been dealing with a steady stream of technical problems — some serious, some less so — tackling them one by one and somehow managing to keep afloat.
Morale swings up and down: sometimes we’re in high spirits, sometimes in the dumps, but with so many of us on board, at least we’re never all in the same stage of despair.
Omer, for instance, is always calm and content.
For the rest of us, the memory of that near-sinking episode at the exit of the Corinth Canal still feels uncomfortably fresh.
Luckily, Omer is endlessly positive, constantly reminding us that there’s no such thing as sailing without hardship. . . Not even when all you need is to take the dinghy from the anchorage to the restaurant.
We kept reassuring ourselves that our shared dinghy for two boats was perfectly fine — just a little water seeping in from the top, nothing serious. So the four of us (all generously built) eagerly climbed aboard.
Wanting to blend into the setting, I even brought along my precious Louis Vuitton bag. The moment the men saw I had a bag, they all promptly stuffed their phones and wallets into it.
We also took the trash with us.
We hadn’t even made it three meters before our dinghy was flooded up to our knees and already starting to sink.
Soaked through, we just managed to reach the nearest pier — where I immediately hurled my bag onto the dock, after holding it above my head for what felt like an endless thirty seconds of transit.
We stumbled to the restaurant, laughing ourselves to tears at the thought: we didn’t sink with the big boats in Corinth, only to almost go down here in a rubber dinghy.
Although we all unanimously agreed it was high time to thank the dinghy for its service and send it to eternal rest, Nikša still insisted on one last mission. He went back to Soledad to fetch the crew and, despite Omer’s protests, managed to deliver both him and Bašak to the restaurant — then even returned for Arif. After their failed attempt to cover that short distance, they turned back and decided there was no choice but to inflate the spare dinghy from Pero and mount the electric motor onto it.
Finally, Nikša and Arif got the dinghy running and joined us for dinner with a significant delay.
NO OUZO TONIGHT?
From the restaurant menu it became clear we were at a cultural crossroads — the Italian influence strong, the Greek touch fading.
When our Turks ordered ouzo, as usual, the waiter looked puzzled, then admitted he’d have to check with the boss to see if they even had it. For us, this was hard empirical proof: Greece was over.
When the ouzo finally did appear, they had only a single brand, and it came with plain water glasses for us to pour ourselves. We put the blame on Corfu — thanks to their ridiculous glasses, everyone who drank ouzo ended up drinking way too much.
Nikša cheerfully ferried us back to the boats two by two, where we promptly passed out and, by boat standards, woke up scandalously late — around 9:30. We were lounging around, chatting idly, and wondering how Başak and Omer had already managed to get up, take the dinghy, and disappear.
But around 10 o’clock, first Başak appeared on deck, then Omer — and that’s when we realized it wasn’t them who had disappeared, only the dinghy had.
Panic quickly spread — because a dinghy with an electric motor, when you don’t even have a gas canister as backup, isn’t something you can put a price tag on. It’s simply priceless.
Naturally, we immediately began arguing and blaming each other, even suspecting nearby Albanians as thieves, since the dinghy wasn’t anywhere in the logical spots along the coast.
Who had left the magnet that serves as a key?
Who was the last one to leave?
Who tied it? How did he tie?
Why on earth would those terrible, imaginary rude Albanians steal our dinghy — new but modest — out of all the dinghies in the bay?
By then we had already resigned ourselves to either stealing someone else’s (which, admittedly, didn’t quite fit with our moral compass) or dragging the old one out of its well-earned retirement and trying to patch it up.
So I made coffee for everyone — at least we could sip something while sitting in the cockpit, silently fuming. While we sat there in silence, slowly rounding around the anchor, Nikša suddenly shouted: ‘There it is!’
We all turned forward — and sure enough, a Maltese yacht appeared, gliding along with two dinghies sailing peacefully at its side. One was a big luxurious white dinghy, the other a small half-deflated gray one — OURS!
Nikša immediately swam over and was met by cheerful, lively gentlemen in their fifties who explained that at the crack of dawn they’d spotted our dinghy banging against the rocks and had gone to rescue it.
They couldn’t believe it had taken us so long to realize it was with them — and we couldn’t believe how we had managed to be more lucky than smart.
In the end, the mystery was easily solved: Özgür and Nikša had been the last to return from the restaurant. Özgür went out first and grabbed the rope; Nikša followed, thinking Özgür had tied it, while Özgür assumed Nikša would. In the end, no one tied it at all. They simply climbed aboard, settled into their cabins, and fell asleep — while the dinghy set off on its own adventure.
A big thank-you to those unknown Maltese gentlemen, wherever they are — goodness is always best repaid with goodness. And so, following the unwritten laws of the sea, we brought them six cold beers as a token of gratitude and then set off on our next and longest leg so far: from Corfu to Dubrovnik.
This was the 6th episode of Soledad Sailing Challenge 2025, others can be found in English and in Croatian on this link.
And if you still haven't figured out who's who from our crew, you can remind yourself here.
