.Nice place,
interesting ,
wonderful bath,
fried fishes in a konoba,
favorable winds,
nice persons.
A regret for swapping a wonderful camping place for an horrid roasted lamb ('twas slaughtered two times ) in the camping's restaurant booked by my partner with a place near the loos.

But I'm in Elba a day before schedule to be a grandfather .

... and also a little bit of my patience.
The weather turns and we earn a free shower of soft water with a siding of thunderbolts so my "conservative" partner leaves me and hitch hikes a camper to Cres.
Now I'm alone and must renounce to a foot trek near Beli and proceed on a forced march on a fine if inhospitable coast.
I had a dream, sleep in a cave and I found this beautiful one..
Don't be afraid for me. It was high tide and was so sheltered I couldn't see the horizon. Nobody believes me but within my limits I'm prudent and conservative.

.Now in primary schools they teach mathematics I learnt at the university and also relations inspired by fuzzy logic so …..
2003 I'm in Croatia with Peter on the island of Logorun and five donkeys assault us
2005 Peter island of Cres Croatia another donkey
ergo …
Ten p.m. I hear an alarmed voice. "A big donkey !!!".
"Nice ! where " and I begin to shot mr. Fuji and pat the beautiful and inamovable beast while it washes the pots of a frantic Peter.

No super luxus hotels
No discos
No aquaparks
Mainly Nothing
No sand only white pebble and malevolent rocks.
Well .... in this bay there was sand, a lot of it, white, heavy, one foot under water before the usual steep pebble beach.
But flowing thru the fingers made in the crystal clear water wonderful clouds that instantly disappeared.
It was so heavy you could smear it like plaster over your body.
A white plastered man.
I really couldn't resist to document it like when I found in Elba a black sparkling black hematite sand.
The potos are halved 'cause they were vertical and for privacy reasons.

. The shore bitten by winter's 'bora' is barren and inhospitable but properties are well delimited by the omnipresent dry walls.
Then abruptly becomes a sheer cliff 150 ft high and here they are I realize that the first snap of mr Fuji is a poor one but it's a memento for me that it was not a dream.
Six or seven regally hovered half an hour in front of my field glasses.
The scupper is a stable boat or I should have overturned every time they passed on my vertical.

.Waiting to depart may be beautiful.
If you, like me, are the affabulatory type can bore your friends or simple acquaintances in the gym's sauna with your voyage to be.
But mainly you use the time to refine the organization.
I have a detailed excel file with items neatly catalogued including the weights but having time I reserve a table or a spare bed or simply a portion of the floor for the things I'll need in a ordered disorder as I remember them.
Ah the toot brush… ah the filleting knife honing stone … ah olive oil to cook ......
My wife was in Elba or this could be a reason to divorce after 37 years of happiness.
Discard half of the food and clothing gear .
.

I'm a gourmet hobo and still honing the itemisation of the 'cambusa'. I'll reduce dried good for condiments and cooking gears.
I go fishing only for alimentary purposes with a draw line only luring fishes easy to catch and not worth a potho.
If I did really angle a big fish I could not cook nor preserve it in the sun. But usually six or seven suitable suicides a day are used as pasta or rice sauce, boiled with mayonnaise, in the pan with tomatoes olive oil and garlic.
My sons greeted me on my birthday with an iper technological collapsible gridiron I'll use next year. .

.. light but worth using it . With the sail I made, so easy to hoist, every time you feel a breeze not exactly in your face it's time to rest.
Using this type of sail is addictive. Me and my friend who made his own on my design used it 70% of the time.
So we sailed thru the ancient channel between Cres and Lojsini cut before roman age in Osor. A hamlet with an odd tradition in classic music.

.. but is really thriving to became civilized. You can see ships full of tourists looking for improbable adventures. There's a famous 'plava grota' (azure cave) with a nondescript opening and being there early we didn't spot it. There where many boats going the other way so we turned and managed to beat the hordes by a neck.
The entrance is long winding corridor barely wide for a kayak or a swimmer . We were alone and I had my usual 'perfect bath' in a water still with ice cold bubbles of soft water from a sub sea spring.:
Later it was a bedlam of people haaing and hooing and Croatian guides bellowing "no fear follow me"

We leave only at noon 'cause in a week the weather may change, the west side of the island is wild, scarcely populated and poorly protected from the bora NE dangerous wind and I'm a prudent sea hobo. I explored that side by car and found a good escape way in Beley if we had to abort the circumnavigation.
We also saw the lake Vrana. A 3 miles long potable lake in a carsic place with no rivers at all 55 ft on the sea level and the bottom 180 ft under is a wonder still to be explained.
We stop to camp (free camping is obviously forbidden) in a well protected inlet with a lot of huge incongruous mooring devices. . Last year a friend of mine was stranded there two days by a 70 mph bora gale.
As I said I'm a sea hobo and like to paddle at ease not worrying where I'll eat or camp next night 'cause with experience and good maps appraising the coast morphology you can always find a suitable place in the last three hours of the day and misadventures like the one of my friends are, in a sense, fun.
My "conservative" companion is of a different advice. He feels at ease not only if he is sure of this evening but of the next and the ….
There's an island Lojsini on the south i did like to explore but the detailed map my friend gave us bore there no pencil notes where to camp eat etc.
"HIC SUNT LEONES" as in ancient charts, a place to shun.
To avoid discussions I gave up on a simple circumnavigation of the main island.

.…. 'haps they are a residue of the communism and you can freely enter from the sea without controls.
Still I dislike campings but this one had a peculiar characteristic I did appreciate. There's a quarter mile avenue halfing it. On the left a placard like this on the right (FKK frei koerper kultur) ." Clothing optional " no obligation this or the other way. A haven for my little libertarian soul. As a symbol a Croatian venus a little on the fat side like a painting by Botero could be better than this funny type with the canoes but I had not the boldness to ask.
But still I don't like camping's restaurants or people chattering loudly in the night and …. and …. and….

.No way Italy, Greece, Croatia free camping is forbidden.
I agree you should not install a tent for a week on a beach but I erect my tent at dusk and sail away before 9 a.m. It's a bivouac and should be permitted. Well tacitly it's so, once in Italy after leaving I ascertained that I was camping under a webcam for the surveillance but nobody said nothing till the morning when a guy, offering me a coffee, said that everybody could see me on the monitors in the square. Perhaps in april 'twas early in the season, I looked civil old and white if not frail with my 200 lbs. Won't try it in august.
But if possible I hide behind bushes and appreciate new olive green prowlers
Shit.
Never in secluded places where it can't degrade.
If you use paper bury it.
After a few years maybe that someone will use your "merde d'artiste " as a memory like this one I found near the camp and now is in my library.
Really I can't make up my mind if it's a real one but doesn't stink

As I said here are the grandfather's tips on nautical trekking.
In summer the sun is scorching and from 12 to 16 hours you must eat and rest in the shade.
That's' the problem and you can see various solutions using the tarp I always carry with me
Two canoes and a cliff
One canoe and no cliff. I really like this one. It complies with my aesthetic and origamistic feelings having no forced creases. It's also good for the rain Made an hole in the paddle for easy mounting.
Always look behind anonymous little beaches .
Find a good konoba (restaurant) with a shady porch.