43:30.2N 16:25.8E

Arrangement were made to have a berth in the ACI marina in Split.  The good news is we go a berth on a Friday night.  The bad news is it is on the outer side of the breakwater along with the mega yachts.  With the wind coming into the harbor there is a chop but also we get thrown around by the constant ferry traffic during the day.

Our first evening was actually fun.  The ACI marina is half occupied by charter sailboats that have Saturday as the changeover day.  So Friday night all the boats return to fill the marina and Saturday afternoon most leave for another week.  Since we were right near the entrance to the marina we got to watch the ACI staff turn away boat after boat that did not have a reservation or was not one of the assigned charter boats.  The constant call from the staff was “Who are you and are you based in this marina”.  If the answer was no the quick response was “Go away.  No room for you”.  With the accent and our recollection of the Soup Nazi on Steinfeld TV show it was just great fun.  Even the pleas by these overcrowded boats No Room for You continued to be the answer.  The best was a plea that they had three small children onboard.  The response was “Not my problem.  Go away”.  Harsh yes but marinas are limited in space and in a lot of the Med is not a place to just drop in and hope for the best, especially in July and August.

We arranged for a rigger and air conditioning techs for Saturday.  The rigging was simple, just a sticking pivot pin at the gooseneck creating noise on every roll.  However the boom is too heavy for a one man job to remove the pivot bolt.  The riggers came in the morning, shored up the boom and removed the pin (actually a bolt).  A little polishing of the corrosion,  good grease and things are back to normal.

Not the case with the air conditioning pump.  The tech did not have a spare motor, could not repair this one and could not find one in Croatia.  Croatia is not a place abundant with spares.  Further they have such strict importation rules it takes a week to get spares through customs.  Now this is not the worst thing since we do have another pump running the air con in the main salon and forward cabins so we shifted our sleeping to there.

Did get to meet another American, from Memphis on a older Mainship motor yacht.  Interesting conversations and a chance to compare notes.  Every time it seems when we meet someone they have lots of good information and it’s a chance to exchange notes.  I am impressed that he is doing the Med trip solo.  A 13 meter power boat from the USA is not the normal sight over here.  A few sailboats yes but not a motor boat.  Seems to make sense however since the trips each day are not too far in the Med, fuel is readily available and it does have a lot of room.  It was shipped over a few years ago and he is having a great time.  Actually, I think he spends more time by far than us exploring the surrounding towns and sights.  We will probably meet again in Greece or Turkey.

We did take these days to visit Split old town and do some shopping.  The old towns are beginning to blend together.  Small street, smooth stone pavement, museums, churches, waterfront promenade, etc.  Split has a few other interesting sites such as the old Roman palace with its underground basement as they call it.  One of the last of the Roman palaces and fell into disuse for a few centuries.  So much so that the basement was filled with rubbish and trash.

Split also has one of the international airports and is a main transfer point for the ferries to the islands and outlying hotels.  The harbor is jammed with commercial boats and the water is just plain disgusting from the raw sewage drained into it from the town.  The local tour guides claim the smell is a natural sulfur spring but looking at the pipe spewing sewage and 10 feet upwind there is no smell, it does not take a genius to see what is happening.  To me the smell makes eating at any of the waterfront restaurants not something I wanted to do.

We stayed five days at this marina, still waiting for the pump to be ordered, shipped, delivered, etc.  Never a straight story from the tech.  This is summer and vacation is more important than anything else in Europe.  So we decided to leave Split and tour other islands while the pump is supposedly shipped.

Waterfront in Split.  Closed to traffic and motor scooters makes walking around nice.  Nice mixture of stores, restaurants and park-like setting.

The Basement of Diocletian’s Palace, a World Heritage site.  Built during 295 to 305 as his retirement home.  The main purpose of the basement was to elevate the Emperor’s Palace above sea level to get the summer sun and sea breeze. Used by other Roman rulers into the 7^th century.   Looks very nice now.  After the fall of the Roman Empire it was used by locals to hide.  Over time rubbish piled up inside and it effectively was no longer in use.  Recent efforts have restored the basement, this is room is about 5% to total size.  Parts of the basement are shops.  The best thing on this day was that the temperature was cool inside while it was blazing hot above.  Just to give a better feel of the size there are 220 buildings within the Palace and 3,000 resident today.

It was hot and this shop keeper knows the best method to beat the heat.  No sure the sales went well this day.  Split has a huge open market that sells everything except 220 volt water pumps.  There is produce, butchers, fish, handmade wares, for blocks and blocks.

Not much more about Split.  There are some very active music festival, operas, etc but we did not visit these or spend any time in museums.  I guess we are getting tired of these.