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Throughout the centuries, Croatia's coast has been home to many bands of pirates. Your company's staff can be “Pirates of Dubrovnik” for a day!
All the participants are formed into two teams (one red team, one blue team), with each team making up HALF the crew on two different ships: this means 50/50 red/blue team on the Karaka, and 50/50 red/blue team on the Tirena – both of which are replica 16th century Dubrovnik ships.
Battle commences! Across an expanse of water, the ships face each other side-on in an area near the Elaphite archipelago. On the deck of the Karaka, the red and blue teams are “shooters”, who will be armed with tennis rackets and 100 tennis balls (different coloured balls for each team). The shooters try to hit as many balls as possible onto the deck of the Tirena, towards the “catchers” of their corresponding team. The catchers will be armed with fishing nets on poles (and their bare hands), in order to catch and collect the balls and fill up their own team’s “treasure box”. Two small rib-boats will be working around the ships to collect balls that end up in the sea and feed them back onboard the Karaka to be used as ammunition again.
The battle lasts up to an hour but so much else is going on apart from the fight itself: the "Captain" of each shooting and catching team has a microphone for directing and driving his "crew" on to victory accompanied by stirring music and provocation of the enemy. There is dancing, drinking and other similar raucous pirate behaviour, and of course a video camera on each ship to ensure future generations can see this historical battle.
