Last year October was mild, largely sunny and by comparison to this October, a fraud. This October is the real deal with ice cold rain sheeting down for a solid week at a time and water sluicing down the streets so that they look like streams.
It is so winter-like that “Coach,” as we know him, is in hiding, waiting for better game days, perhaps. Coach is a large, eccentric older man who walks very slowly through our village dressed in his blue and white track suit and looking neither left nor right. He defies traffic if there is an opportunity for confrontation. Although he seems as determined as a bulldozer when he walks his routes, he does stop at every intersection, slowly and carefully looks around and then gives a long blast on his whistle. Even to my failing ears, it seems to have about a two block range. We think he means to announce his intentions, even though no one other than Coach knows what they are. Over the nine months we’ve lived in Barroselas, Coach has become a fixture, an icon, a constant in our lives, but now he’s found it too inclement to make his rounds.
Recently we took Coach’s cue and skated out of here. We traveled the Croatian Coast for eleven days with friends and I’m saying it is a very fine October Cure. 
I had not been to Dubrovnik in 40 years and in that time it has been shelled and has suffered the outrages of civil and religious wars, but now, though one can clearly see the scars of the repaired stone work and roofs in the old city, Dubrovnik seems recovered. Recovered so well, in fact that it is now a magnet for the hideous 5000-passenger cruise ships that arrive daily, sometimes four or five of them at once…like a blight, like a selfie-plague in Bermuda shorts and flip flops.
It took us no time at all to get out of Dubrovnik and onto a roomy and weatherly sloop with our friends, Tracy and Bill…and Tean, the vigorous young skipper who knew every rock and cove and all ancient and modern history with an hilarious Croatian bias. And always sounding exactly like Borat.
“Leetle known, but thees very place where Ulysses made first beach during Odyssey. Croatia not Croatia yet, but Ulysses made beach here. High Fiiiiive!”
And when the boat heeled slightly in a breeze, Tean would put his fingers over his mouth in mock horror and shout out, shrilly “Oh My Gaaawd!” Soon we were all doing it, all except Tracy who believed the heeling motion was a certain precursor to doom. Her best sailing conditions occurred after the anchor was down.
When the anchor was down, or when we tied up stern-to at the stone quays, magnificent food was always close at hand. And not just great food, but surroundings to match. The first night we tied up in the miniscule fishing village of Sudjuradz on the island Sipan. The restaurant was in a 700 year old building and our table was beside an immense and ancient olive press. It was as romantic and satisfying as any dinner in memory and spirits were high…let it rain in Viana!
The next day in Parmena on Mljet Island, we stern-tied just five feet from our restaurant, which was convenient, but the food was forgettable and the harbor was filled with 100-passenger tour boats rafted up to each other to disgorge their charges, which sadly seems about the only means of revenue for all of the Croatian coast.
On day three, after a rousing sail, we found Korcula, a picture-perfect walled city that fits its description of a miniature Dubrovnik. The water lapping at the city walls is unbelievably clear and clean, the facilities in the yacht basin are top-drawer and the city is so ancient, beckoning, gentle and adagio in spirit, it immediately felt as though we’d reached the Croatia we sought. We stayed in Korcula two nights and got a feel for the rhythm of the island traffic. There are several small scheduled ferries, accommodating perhaps 50 people and there was one remnant from the 1960s, a graceful fast, island packet, of about 200 feet in length, the likes of which plied the coasts of the world in the time when aesthetics were critical to ship design, when a delicious curving sheer and a raked bow complemented the fantail 
stern and made one turn one’s head in appreciation and joy. I felt so fortunate to get to see one of the last packets still working.
We worked our way northward and then in a loop back to Dubrovnik, sailing every day close ashore past the limestone caves and intensely green cedar groves. We made many stops to swim, go ashore for coffee or lunch, walk the quays and village streets and feel the internal rpm slow and become just about perfect. On every south facing patch of soil, and poor soil it is, the land is terraced into what look like cliff-vineyards or olive groves. 
As Captain Tean said, “Thees very famous ancient wine area. Wine ees best in all Croatia and Croatian wine is growing very very famous. Very good. My great great grandfather make terraces. Olive oil also best in all Croatia. Very very famous, this olive oil.”
During our time aboard with Tean we learned that he had a two week old daughter and that his mother had come to stay with his wife or girlfriend while Tean was at sea…I thought there were two of them for awhile, but they were the same person. And now Mom would not leave and the wife/girlfriend was going “mental” according to Tean. He worried about this situation every day and declared that only he could convince Mom to go home, but that he was not sure his wife/girlfriend would survive until he returned, so we made one of our ports of call Cavtat, where Tean, Girlfriend/Wife, Mother and Grandfather live. He stood on the quay awaiting their arrival and said to me proudly, “Always can spot Mom; she is very tall for Croatian woman.” When they got to the boat, I judged his mom very determined, but no more than five feet tall.
The Croatian archipelago between Dubrovnik and Split consists of 1244 islands, 78 of which are considered ‘big’, and 424 are ‘small’. I have no idea how to feel about the other 742….middling, perhaps, but all of them are beautiful and offer as close to paradise as I can conjure. The next time I go there it will be directly to Split and then southward on the ubiquitous inter-island ferries and with any luck, at least one leg on the old and gorgeous coastal packet….If you stay just out of the main tourist haunts the Croatia of simpler times is still available.
Now back in Barroselas, we have tuned the furnace on for the first time since early April, but my shop is just the right temperature to finish the Cherry and Brazilian Walnut desk I am making for Linda, we have family and friends en route to visit and we are starting to plan our next trip, a smaller affair, maybe a long weekend in Barcelona or Corsica. Life is good.
