The Day We Almost Got Left Floating in the Adriatic Sea

So, we’re on an 8-day Croatian island tour. How we even arrived here is an adventure in itself and a tale for another time. But today, just a few hours ago, the boat stops in a scenic grotto with crystal waters where it’s shallow and a deep jewel toned blue where it’s not. Sounds beautiful, right?At breakfast, we were told we’d stop in the early afternoon/late morning and have two hours of swimming time after a three-hour sail among the scattering of Dalmatian Islands.
So the boat stops. People jump in. Splashing. Laughing. Good times. Angela was resting in the cabin so I go to tell her it’s swimming time and go pull on my swimsuit.
Fast forward 15 minutes. I jump into the water. Refreshing. Glorious. A few hundred yards in front of our boat is a naked family on their baby-yacht – hot mom, dad, and a child of undetermined (by me) gender. A dirty old man on our boat is watching hot mom through binoculars while everyone else is either in the water or getting ready to get in the water or sunning themselves on deck.
I swim around a bit then head toward shore a decent distance away.
Fast forward five minutes. Angela jumps in the water from our boat. She swims out to me and we chat. Her back is to our boat. She’s screwing up her face at the disgusting feel of the sand/silt/seaweed combination squishing between our toes under the water. I’m enjoying the sun, the cool water, plus occasional sightings of naked hot mom. Then:
“Hey,” I say to Angela. “They’re pulling up the swim ladder on our boat.”
She turns. “What?!” Without waiting another second, she swims toward our boat, calling out. “Wait!”
The anchor is still down, though, so I’m not worried. But Angela’s already swum about twelve feet of water in 0.02 seconds in the direction of the boat. She’s a pretty good swimmer. She’s swimming like crazy and calling out, “Wait! Wait!”
After about twenty seconds, they drop a (another?) swim ladder in the water.

I think: “Oh, they were just changing out the ladders.” I laugh and call out my theory to Angela.
She ignores me and keeps swimming for the boat, but I already reassured myself so I go back to floating on my back and enjoying the various sweet things going on – weather, water, hot mom. Angela gets to the boat in a few minutes, maybe even seconds, and calls out to me, very calmly: “Get over here.”
I swim toward the boat. Slowly. Not to be an ass (although I thought she was being a drama queen with all that “wait, wait” business) but because I’m a super slow swimmer. Plus no one on the boat looks urgent about anything. The Germans are drinking beer and laughing. The water doesn’t look like it’s being churned up by a rabid shark. So, slow.
Fast forward ten minutes. I get on the boat. Angela’s drying her face with her sarong. She looks perturbed.
“They’re leaving,” she says. I stare at her. “They were leaving without us,” she says, because I apparently didn’t get it.
Everyone is on board, drinking beers and looking over the water, checking out hot mom and maybe even super-naked dad, who is definitely not hot. But that’s only my opinion. As I walk past the group of mostly Germans to get my sarong and wipe my incredibly disbelieving face, a creepy guy (not the one with the binoculars) mumbles something to me in Germglish. I pretend not to hear. I don’t have to pretend not to understand.
The ladder rattles against the side of the boat as Papa Captain pulls it up again (there is only one ladder, Angela tells me later). The boat starts up. We immediately set off for another, not-so-nearby island. As we pull away, I look at the naked family still chillin’ on their baby yacht. Ever the optimist, I think: Maybe they’d have given us a ride back to Split if we’d asked nicely. Being naked seems a small enough price to pay for rescue.

Waiting.

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