After a few days sailing around the Croatian islands with beautiful blue skies the weather deteriorated ever so slightly and a slight gusting winding started barraging our boat.
Unfortunately all our blow-up boats - for floating in the water off the Dalmation Coast - were haphazardly tied down to the boat, mine less than others as after one large gust while we were anchored it flew off the boat.
I asked our host if I could swim after it, he said it was OK as we were stopped for a swim break anyway, but one of the deck hands warned me that there's a fairly strong current.
Throwing caution to the wind I jumped off the side of the boat chasing after my little boat, every time I would come within 5 metres of it another gust would come and blow it another 5 metres away.
When I finally decided to stop and take note of the situation I realised I was quite some distance away from our boat and the current was ever-so-slightly pulling me further away.
Looking at my small boat, and the big boat, and back again, I decided it was time to give up and swim back to safety. I'm a fairly competent swimmer but with the current against me and having already swum half the total distance to say it was a struggle would be an understatement.
I managed to back-stroke, breath-stroke, free-style it back to the boat and climbed up on deck, sat down with a towel around me and a nice big glass of water.
Upon reflection, jumping off the boat in the first place wasn't such a good idea.
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