Living on the edge, or taking risks?

Living on the edge, or taking risks. That's up to you, but I'm not sure at the moment.

Last week I sailed through the national park of the Kornati. The park consists of approximately 89 bare isles, hardly inhabited. Last year, during my reconnaissance in Croatia, I visited the Kornati isles as well, but because they are known as the pearls of Croatia, I decided to finish them again. I decided on an other perspective. I read the touristic books in advance, and on the biggest isle, Kornat, there are ruins of a fort build in 600 AC. I wanted to visit these ruins. The nearest port was a small village harbour, about 3 km distance. A plan was born. While sailing in between the isles I also saw a desolated church on Kornat, and decided to visit that as well.

Kerkje is church.

Upon arrival in het village harbour it turned out to be a lot smaller than I had questimated after looking on the nautical chart. The recommended berthing spot was alongside a quay. In reality this quay was rocks stacked upon each other, not nearly smooth enough to berth Madame Curie safely alongside. I was not to sure about the depth eiter. There was a mooringblock about 5 meters from the quay, cleary ment to be used by smaller boats. But I'm not a quitter. The picture below is of the recommended berthing spot. Everybody can see that it is not very suitable. I ended up tying the mooring line to a cleat in the middle of Madame Curie, and berthing bow to (the bow is shallower, and less vulnerable). The result was as is shown on the first picture of this post. Berthed, diagonal, just outside the real port.I was really in doubt. Could I leave Madame Curie like this? Was it safe enough? Should I walk to the ruins and the church? I decided it was okay.

Just to make sure, I double checked the route to the ruins with the only 2 people I could find in the entire "village". Then I started walking. There are no actual routes. The locals walk alongside stone walls they have build on the entire island. Upon arrival at the church, it was closed. This happens to me quite a lot Croatia, after a very long walk, usually up hill, a church or chapel turns out to be closed. I was about to continue my walk to the ruins when I noticed a ring just underneath the window on the leftside....



Found it!!!!!

So I could enter the church!!! The inside was very plain, but it felt like I had made a ver sneaky discovery. After leaving the church I locked up again.
The walk to the ruins was uphill, and rather challenging. There were may sheep, and they had created paths. Well, actually, ik was short patches of path in between the rocks. But the view was fantastic when I reached the ruins.

When I came back to Madame Curie, she was happily rocking about in the harbour. So in hindsight it was "living on the edge" instead of risk taking. But I'm not sure that I will leave Madame Curie in this manor the next time. I'll have to think about it..... Afterwards I left to a safe harbour for the night.