My name is Loris Giuricich. I was born on and island called Mali Losinj, in Croatia in 1957. I come from a history of people who enjoy boating with sailboats, mainly. My father and most of his relatives had something to do with boats; my uncle worked on building boats for oceans and seas. My dad built boats as well. They also did a lot of fishing in the water to get their dinner. My dad taught me how to fish when I was young. This history of boating got me into boating as well. I used to go on sailboats all the time, and built my own sailboat too. One time that I remember boating the most was from when I was about 24. My siblings and I went to visit our cousins in Croatia. They took us to go boating on the Adriatic Sea, which is the body of water next to Croatia and Italy, in Europe. We went around the whole island, which takes about 2 hours. It is about a 4-5 mile trip. The water of the Sea was beautiful. It is a strong, royal blue colour. It was perfectly clear too. You can see down to the bottom of the Sea at some points too because it was that clear. I remember seeing fishes, and the rocks. There are even jellyfish, and lots of them. We even went swimming in the water. We jumped off the boat and into the middle of the Sea.There were jellyfish in the water, and we had to be extra careful because if a jellyfish stung you, you would get sick, so we didn't go swimming for very long. We continued around the southern part of the island. The water got pretty wavy, so we had to strengthen the engine of the boat to be able to go through the waves without being pushed back to where we started from. We could see the mountains of the islands, and the big lava rocks that go right into the water. I remember seeing the waves crash up against the rocks strongly. It was eventually time for us to go back to the island. There was a narrow passage way that we had to pass through on the way to the docs. Unfortunately, the engine of our boat died out right before we went through the narrow part. My cousin had to get out of the boat and fix the engine so he left me in charge of steering the boat. Since the engine wasn't running, we were just drifting along. I knew how to steer a sailboat, but this was a little different because it was a different boat. I had to angle the boat and keep it in line in order not to hit the rock piers on either side. Luckily, we drifted through, but the waves were hitting us from behind. At the last minute, my cousin fixed the engine. We had a little bit of an adventure there, but we managed to get to the doc safely and we survived the waves! I would say that stories like this show my connection to water, which would be through my time boating as well as my family ties.