Escape from Umag

Heerenxvii
Sat 10 Jul 2010 22:24
G: After a good night sleep we woke up with the pirate issue staring from our breakfast plate. From all the possible scenarios we decided to try and exit customs officially to return to Slovenia. Going further south was not an option and as we as persons (not the boat) went through customs at arrival, we had to 'check out' to prevent later problems when entering Croatia again. We did not want to dock the boat at customs so left the boat at the bouy in the harbor and took the dinghy ashore. When we opened the customs door I knew this would not be our lucky day... Behind the desk was a female, so all would be officially via the book and no exceptions allowed. Her first question was were the boat was and that, no matter what, we would first have to put the boat at the peer and than we could talk. Motoring back to the boat we knew what that meant... Chaining up the boat, than talk.

It was around noon so on a very lucky day she would go on lunch break and a male colleague would take her place and be helpfull, but did we want to test our luck?

Since we anyway already entered the world of piracy the scenario of escaping seemed all of a sudden not such a big step to execute and made so much sense... We of course had to hurry as she was expecting us back. So we threw out the fenders and made every attempt to act naturally. And hey, there are more ways to Rome, so maybe we were just taking the long way? I suggested to step on the gas and make a quick escape, but A did not see that same movie and thought that would surely draw all the attention we weren't looking for. So maybe we were taking the extra, extra long route and took the opportunity to test the sails? Let's test the stupidity of our opponent...

So, very calmly we exited the harbor while I kept a sharp eye on every speedboat in the area. After a while nothing no alarms or radio commands so it seemed we succeeded! The only problem is that A and I officially are still in Croatia, which will definitely be a topic to discuss on our next arrival, but we safely made it back to Slovenia.

Tomorrow more...

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