How to Totally Brain Sailing in Croatia

Please find herewith your definitive, fool-proof guide to totally braining a sailing holiday in Croatia.

Step 1. Select your vessel with care. Do you want to burn a lot of fossil fuels, eat food you could get anywhere and pump handbag house from your massive soundsystem and generally be obnoxious? Then you will be looking for a stinkboat or a catamaran and probably a pirate flag or dancing pole on the deck or something like that to go with it. For the comfort and enjoyment of others, please stop reading here, this guide is not meant for you.

As for the rest, a 44ft Bavaria like Tryphosa, or a 50ft Beneteau will do just nicely.

Step 2. Assemble a top-shelf crew.

Step 3. Have a solid plan.

Step 4. Be willing to diverge from it in order to avoid inclement weather and the sorts of people described in Step 1. If you do, your trip will be awesome.

Saturday - Motor from Trogir to charming Maslinica on Šolta. Secure a rockstar table for dinner.

Sunday - Get the sails up from Maslinica to Komiža on Vis. Anchor for a swim but decide against staying the night because of the hectic 'green shorts' and swell. If you see these guys, move on.

Motor to a tiny fishing village (pop. 30) on the nearby island of Biševo for the night. Have amazing dinner of white bean and sausage soup and Karlovačko with the whole town.

Sip red wine under the stars (with star goggles, of course) at the rustic hilltop terrace bar which is piping Leonard Cohen and only Leonard Cohen into the silent night.

Monday - Arrive at the Blue Grotto before 8am to avoid the park rangers and crowds. Take the tender into the cave for a sneaky swim in the amazing iridescent blue water, you'll have the cave all to yourself. Later we're told you're not allowed to swim because its a nesting spot for sharks, so maybe watch that. Sail back to Komiža for lunch (wood-fired pizza at Karijola, amazing!!) and drop the outboard for repairs (not-so-amazing). Walk along the peninsula to Kut, shop for hand-crafted leathergoods and take a dip in the crystal clear waters along the way. Push on to Rukavac, Vis for the night. Amazing alfresco dinner at Konoba Roki's.

Tuesday - Head to Vis town to collect our outboard and take a quick swim. A full day's sail from Vis to Palmižana on the beautiful island of Sveta Klement, part of an archipelago of islands called the Pakleni Otoci. Rockstar entrance on the tender to the impossibly cool 'treehouse' bar for pre-dinner cocktails. Later, walk through the pine forest to the other side of the island for drinks, gelati and the live reggae-on-the-ukelele band. Get an early night in preparation for our assault on Hvar. 15 berths at the port of Hvar town, about 15 million boats competing for a spot and we must get one. Brains and brawn are required to conquer this.

Wednesday - Palmižana to Hvar. Secure rockstar berth through a mixture of skill and cunning. Some do's: sending a tender in to mind your spot; defensive positioning; sweet-talk and flashing some side-boob to the old seadog port master; chit-chat in Croatian; having a sailing yacht over 40ft. Some don'ts: show up sinking cans at 11am; having a stinkboat worth less than $10M or a sailing yacht under 40ft; taking no for an answer.

These were our neighbours.

After lunch, hire a car and take the unpaved road to Sveta Nedjelja via a magical swim spot.

Late lunch at Bilo Idro and explore the remote hilltop town and vineyards behind. Head back to Hvar via a roadside stall selling lavender products, condiments and rakija (flavoured brandy). The carob flavoured rakija (Rogačica)

will make you actually like carob.

Croatian tapas at Konoba Menago followed by drinks at Kiva and dancing at Veneranda, a club in a 500-odd year old Venetian hilltop castle. You're rockstars, so obviously you take the party back to the boat. Its party-Tryphosa-non-stop bloody.

Thursday - Feeling like death, head to a bay near Stari Grad on the north-western part of Hvar. It was probably beautiful but I can't remember because I was too hung. Head to a tiny bay, Lučica (coordinates +43° 21' 15.58", +16° 22' 22.56") for the night. Another memorable rustic meal at a village Konoba, and early to bed for all.

Friday - Lučica to swimming spot south of Stomorska on Šolta where are find the clearest turquoise waters yet and lick rock sea salt off, well, rocks.

Head for lovely Milna on Brač for refueling and general dawdling before reluctantly returning Tryphosa to Trogir

So, you see, that is how we totally brained sailing in Croatia.

Yours til our next braining-sailing adventure,

Tryphosa

Oh, nostalgia

I'm behind on so many posts that deserve priority over this one but I am just itching to share this link.

Arcade Fire have released an interactive video directed by Chris Milk for their new single 'We Used To Wait' which I cannot stop playing.

It opens like any other browser window, but you're invited to enter the address of the house you grew up in. Be patient, and close other windows, because this baby is 'processor intensive'. Then the video starts with a child of indiscriminate gender in jeans, all-stars and hoodie (grey marl, of course) running down a suburban street and progressively new browser windows open showing views of your old neighbourhood, your old street and your old house. All this climaxes at a rhythmic bridge when you're asked to write a message to the kid who used to live there, the younger you, which, because you're using a mouse, appears on the screen as a child-like scrawl. At the end you can send your message to others, or respond to someone else's message.

I'm glad I'm not too much of a cynic to enjoy something so obviously contrived to wrangle feelings of nostalgia out of you. A little sepia wash of the google maps views is all it would have taken for me to out-and-out bawl, I think.

Funny that a song expressing longing for a time before emails, facebook and mobiles (and blogs for that matter), when we used to write letters and wait for letters in return, needed the interweb and google chrome and HTML5 (whatever that is) to communicate that sentiment to so many, so effectively. Yup, that's deep.

Anyway, I hope you have fun taking a trip down memory lane.

The Tyranny of Distance - Part I

Nothing inspires a spontaneous gasp in a European quite like telling them you are from Australia.

'Ohhhhh - is very far, no?'

'How long, how long it take, to fly?'

And on and on it goes.

In 'The Tyranny of Distance', the historian Geoffrey Blainey explained how Australia's geographic isolation was a decisive factor in its late colonisation - basically, it was too far and thus uneconomic to produce anything here, until whales were discovered close to our shores.

Anyway, I'm not going to endorse any of Blainey's views, mostly because he could well be a racist, right-wing nutjob, but I think his book's title is an elegant and eloquent phrase for the neglect we suffer at the hands of the international high street brands.

In this 2-part series, I run through my wish-list. We'll start with the Swedes.

H&M

Rumoured to open next year at Westfield Sydney. Unfortunately, next year is too late to catch the Lanvin for H&M capsule collection which goes on sale on 23 November 2010.

The funny kids over at The Vine have compiled a list of ways to get your hands on pieces from Lanvin's H&M collection, which include appointing a personal shopper at $95/hr and getting a German post box. My strategy of choice is to ask one of my London-resident mates/family members to forward me my goodies that I'll buy through the H&M UK online store, which opens on 16 September. Given every Aussie knows someone in the UK, that would seem to be the most logical and cost-effective approach. Unless the Lanvin collection isn't available in the online store. Then I'm stuffed.

Weekday

Something happens to me when I walk into this store - the incessant babble that is my inner monologue quietens and is replaced with songs by The Knife. Or La Roux's remix of Fever Ray's 'When I Grow Up'. Is that weird?

So you know Cheap Monday? They actually do more than jeans - they do mens and womens everything from clothing to shoes to sunglasses. Really, well, cheap, wardrobe basics with a dark Scando twist. Cheap Monday is owned by MTWTFSS Weekday, who also do men's and women's everything with a dark Scando twist, plus selected vintage and regular collaborations with up-and-coming designers. Last summer it was Central St Martins graduate, Peter Jensen (I bought a hot electric blue corduroy mini from his collection), and this A/W 2010, its a new (to me) Swedish designer, Diana Orving. Some pics of this collaboration below.

This is the store you go to when you (a) want to buy some cool basics like T's, or black pants, or a jumper, or some cheap sunnies; (b) have a lil sumthin special to go to but you don't want to buy a whole new outfit, you just want something extra to make an old outfit look new; or (c) are bored and just want to buy something. You will definitely buy something here because everything screams 'useful' enough for the price. Clever Swedes.

A footnote: La Roux's mash-up album 'Sidetracked', released just this month in the UK, is splendid fun. You should just buy it. Right now. And check out Diana Orving's website. Its my birthday on the 20th. Just so you know.

Cos

A visit here is equivalent to aerobic exercise for me; my heart rate is at, like, 160 the entire time I'm in the store (which can be hours, really).

Think Country Road. Same, but different. Ideally, you want both. But Cos is cheaper, more directional and never compromises on quality. I have no idea how they produce clothes of such great design and tailoring in such divine fabrics ALL THE TIME. There's no weak links like you sometimes get at Zara. And there's new deliveries every week. The real discriminator are Cos staff - they're so helpful and knowledgeable and...happy! Yes - you're still in Europe! Even in the Hague! (sorry, the Dutch aren't known for their commitment to customer service)

Bit of corporate trivia, these guys are owned by H&M, who also own Cheap Monday and MTWTFSS Weekday. And another label Monki, that the kids just love, but for me, it's a bit tat. It's becoming a very tight comp between the Swedes and the Spaniards. Oh how I love a good rumble!