The Great Wall of Ôstrica

Leaving behind the small island of Krapanj, our next stop was just a few miles on to Uvala Mirine where we anchored in the lovely calm bay surrounded by trees with views of an old medieval defensive wall. It seems to be a popular bay for the locals who were sitting around the rocky ‘beaches’ along the shoreline under the shade of the trees with picnics and barbecues, sunbathing and swimming in the clear water.

The Turks started raiding this area and the town of Grebaštica in the late 15th Century. This prompted the wealthy residents to construct an impressive wall that would protect them and the peninsular from the Ottoman attacks.

The imposing Wall of Ôstrica (Bedem Grebaštica as it’s known locally meaning defensive, protective wall), served as a defence until the end of the Turkish threat in the 17th Century. Its role then evolved to quarantine plague sufferers who were moved to the other side of the wall. Later, the locals used the wall as a shelter from terrible pirate attacks until eventually it was completely neglected.

Today it is maintained by conservators and the entire peninsula is a hunting ground where they are trying to keep game on the peninsula. It is said to be home to herds of goats and wild sheep with characteristically curved horns.

We went ashore in the evening to walk along the wall which is still in good condition with only the parts closest to the sea showing damage. It is about 10 meters high and 1 meter wide running up and over the hill which bridges the relatively short neck of the Ôstrica peninsular.

After walking the length of the wall we continued around the hunting ground of the heavily wooded peninsular which is 5-6km long with many small secluded beaches. There were sounds of animals around us and we could hear them rustling in the trees and bushes but we didn’t see any (apart from several large black spiders hanging on webs from the trees), at times it felt more like we were the ones being hunted!

As we walked up to the top of a hill we had views of all the bays around the peninsular and back over the trees to the wall with further hills beyond.

As the sun was starting to go down we decided it was time to turn around so that we could get back to ZigZag before dark.

Our next visitors were due to arrive at Split Airport in a few days so the following morning we lifted the anchor from what is now one of our favourite bays, and headed south again. We planned to head back to Rogoznica but we had a very comfortable sailing wind so decided to continue on towards Vinišće.

We had a small crisis on board as we had run out of beer (or so we thought) so needed to find a convenient shop to stock up.

After anchoring in the large bay at Vinišće, we launched Ed and Fred and went to shore. As we also didn’t have much food on board we decided to treat ourselves to dinner before going to the grocery store. We sat down at a beachside table at a restaurant which we had heard has good food at a reasonable price and waited for some time before being served, by this point Paul was gagging for a beer!

It looks like you have to get your towels out in the evening to reserve your favourite spot on the beach here.

Eventually our order was taken and an ice cold beer appeared at last and the crisis was averted for now. After a slow start the service in the small family run restaurant was very good as was the food.

By the time we had finished our meal the shop had closed so we were unable to provision and therefore, still without beer on board.

Don’t worry, other drinks were available.

The next morning we were woken up at 6am with bells ringing at the church, they were very tuneful (and loud) and rang continuously for a couple of minutes. We had a list of jobs to do in preparation for our visitors so that prompted us to get started on them early before the sun got too hot.

As there are little people visiting we decided to attach netting to the guard rails, I thought it would be an easy job! First we removed the guard wire, then put netting on one side….then removed it again because it was too loose….then reinstalled it…then removed it as I had made a mistake feeding it on to the wire….then reinstalled it again! It took 2 full days to complete, and it was hot!

The water maker is still out on show in the saloon so that had to be flushed, disconnected and all stowed away safely.

Fortunately, from having our previous visitor we had already figured out how to clear out our front cabin, but now we had the challenge of clearing out the remaining small single cabin which as you can imagine, had now become very tightly packed with everything that had previously been stored in the front cabin. Space was now at a premium.

We went back to shore and finally managed to stock up on the essentials, it wasn’t until I was unpacking the shopping that I found some beers stored away safely in the bilge that I had forgotten about, imagine Paul’s face when I told him that we hadn’t run out of beer after all!

Once we had the boat prepared and ready for visitors we made our way back to Baotić Marina which we thought would be a convenient place to welcome small guests onboard.