The day we left Prisnjak Mali was another great sailing day, and we had the main and Spinnaker combo moving us along nicely. The plan was to sail to an anchorage in the Split area, but we never got there.
About 2 and a half hours into the sail, a Coast Guard Cutter steamed our way and hailed us on the VHF radio. They told us to immediately change course and go North due to some manouvers the military was holding in the area we were transiting. The area wasn’t listed as a military zone on the charts and we didn’t hear any report on the VHF.
The wind was blowing 18 knots so we had a bit of a fire drill getting the kite down. This was followed by an uncomfortable bash North for an hour, before turning South again once we had a few more boats around us closer to the coast.
We still had plenty of daylight so we hoisted the kite again and off we went…for about 40 minutes before a military RIB came tearing up to us yelling for us to turn North again. We couldn’t get any information about how far North though.
Interestingly the only other boat that was contacted/ intercepted by the authorities, was also transmitting his position with AIS like we were. We turned it off after that.
With our plans for heading to Split aborted, we started looking for an anchorage with some Westerly protection until 8pm, then we’d need NE protection overnight. There weren’t many to choose from. After poking around a few spots which were too deep or with limited protection, we took the chance to head up a 3 mile inlet to a spot with good NE protection and good holding. The Westerly slowly died after 2 hours of a lee shore, and it turned out to be a good location for the evening blow. Whew!