Sidro je bilo teško, ali ga je kapetan ipak podigao prije nego što su se pojavili veliki valovi.

Croatian normally uses the perfect tense for past actions and states: auxiliary je + past participle bilo. With the verb biti in a sentence like this, that often translates into natural English simply as was.

The form bilo is neuter singular because the subject sidro is neuter singular.

Because sidro is a neuter singular noun, and the adjective has to agree with it.

• masculine: težak
• feminine: teška
• neuter: teško

So Sidro je bilo teško is the correct agreement.

Yes, sidro is neuter. But the unstressed 3rd-person singular object pronoun ga can refer to a masculine or neuter singular noun.

Here ga means it and refers back to sidro.

Croatian has unstressed words called clitics, and they usually have to appear very early in the clause, often in the second position.

After ali, the clitics come right away: ga je. That is why the sentence is ali ga je kapetan ipak podigao, not ali je kapetan ga....

In this kind of sentence, with the 3rd-person singular auxiliary je, object clitics normally come before it:

• ga je
• ju je
• ih je

So ga je kapetan podigao is the expected standard pattern.

The past participle agrees with the subject of its clause. Here the subject is kapetan, which is masculine singular, so the form is podigao.

Compare:

• kapetan je podigao
• kapetanka je podigla
• dijete je podiglo

Podigao comes from the perfective verb podići, which presents the action as a single completed event.

That fits the meaning here: the captain successfully lifted the anchor before something else happened.

Dizao would come from the imperfective dizati and would suggest an ongoing, repeated, or incomplete action, more like was lifting or kept lifting.

Ipak means still, nevertheless, or all the same.

It shows contrast:

• the anchor was heavy
• ipak, the captain lifted it anyway

So it strengthens the idea of doing something despite difficulty.

Prije nego što is a set phrase meaning before when it introduces a full clause.

So:

prije nego što su se pojavili veliki valovi

means:

before the big waves appeared

Here što is just part of the conjunction. It does not mean what in this sentence.

Because the verb is pojaviti se, meaning to appear or to show up.

Many Croatian verbs are learned together with se, so it is best to treat pojaviti se as the full dictionary form in this meaning.

The subject is veliki valovi, which is plural, so the auxiliary must be plural su.

The participle pojavili is also plural masculine, agreeing with valovi.

So the whole form is:

• su = plural auxiliary
• se = part of the verb
• pojavili = plural masculine participle

Because valovi are the subject of the subordinate clause: they are the ones that appeared.

Subjects are normally in the nominative, so you get:

• veliki valovi = nominative plural

not an object form.

Croatian usually does not need a separate past perfect in a sentence like this. The order of events is already clear from prije nego što.

So ordinary past forms are enough:

• first, the captain lifted the anchor
• then, the big waves appeared

Yes, to a degree. Croatian word order is fairly flexible because endings show grammatical relationships.

For example, Kapetan ga je ipak podigao... is also possible.

But clitics like ga, je, and se still have strict placement rules, so not every rearrangement is acceptable. For instance, Kapetan je podigao ga is not standard.