15 October 2022 - Luka Soliscica

We had quite a discussion about how to drop the lazy line, to avoid getting it wrapped round the keel, propeller or the rudder. The sequence we decided on worked and we slowly and carefully made our way out of the buoy field in this beautiful cove.

We only had to go 10 miles to go, so could take our time. It was a downwind sail with just the jib, going slowly in the light wind. It was a glorious sunny day with blue sky. We only saw about a handful of other sailing boats.

We dropped anchor in Luka Soliscica, the bay with the small village of Soline at its head. We launched the tender, arrived in one of the tiny harbour areas, and walked through to the other side of the island to see the bay of Sakaran.

We realised that we came here about 15 years ago, when we chartered a boat for two weeks in August. It is, or, at least was, a beautiful bay with bright turquoise water next to a sandy beach. I was quite shocked though, having seen it as a wild unspoilt place all those years ago. Now the shallow bathing area has had to be roped off and there were mooring buoys beyond. Worse though, was that amongst the pebbles at the back of the beach, was a ton of plastic rubbish; little pieces that have broken up; just the sort of stuff that is a real danger to wildlife. At the beginning of the footpath down to the beach was a sign saying it was a protected area and don’t leave rubbish or light fires. I wonder who is protecting it, they don’t seem to be doing a very good job. It’s in need to teams of volunteers to try to clean it up.