Croatia / Dubrovnik

[tico]

Anyone sailed out there?

Have booked a deal for next week and am looking for any advice...

Things to see?
food?
Relative costs of eating out?
Weather / temperature?
tides?

etc, etc
TIA

 

[Metabarca]

Things to see: everything within the walls. Away from Dubrovnik: Mljet, Lastovo, Sipan...
Food: fish will mostly be frozen and/or non-local or farmed (bream); meat: good and cheap; beer: good; wine: pass!
Eating out: much more expensive than it used to be; less than the UK (I believe). Avoid places with photos of the dishes outside.
Weather: probably mild, with sea temperature still in the 20s (°C!), but possibility of bora (which is not to be trifled with, although not so severe down there as it is in the north).
Tides: what tides? Sometimes there are sea surges, but this is mainly caused by the winds.
Many bays will have mooring buoys for which you pay a small sum. The whole area will be nice and quiet now. Enjoy!

 

[Mukes]

I asked a sailing colleague in our Croatian office to give some advice on Yacht charter etc to a fellow forumite a couple of months ago. I've pasted the content of the email below:
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The coast is quite long with larger islands in NW part, a lot of smaller in the middle and again larger ones in SE. I prefer middle and SE part as it is still less commerical. In my opinion the best places to start are between Zadar and Split where you will find about 10 marinas with charther fleet. The prices are quite similar as well as quality of boats. Also, Zadar and Split have airports so you can probably fly directly from UK (I know Ryanair was flying from Stansted to Zadar last> summer). The months of July and August are crowded - both on the shore and on the sea. My favourite months are late May and Jun, but also September is very nice (warm sea, a bit less wind but shorter days).

Sea - it is quite different than you have in England. Low and high tide is only 0.5 m difference so this is easy. Typically the coast is steep so see is much deeper and there are quite a lot of underwater rocks, shallow places and small islands. The charts are very good as well as GPS so you just need to take care (as such rocks are sometimes far away from the coast).

Weather is very predictable and weather foreacast is almost every hour on radio (also in English) and also on internet (very reliable). Summer days are normally with west wind (called Maestral - "works" from 11 am to 4 pm approximately and with 10-15 knots) and nights are calm. It is easy to find good sheltered bays for spending night on anchor. Nice to see are Kornati islands (it is National park), islands of Vis, Hvar, Korcula and if you will have time you can sail up to Dubrovnik which is far in the SE.

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I hope this is of use - have a good time.

 

[tico]

Many thanks both

any other tips?

 

[Metabarca]

Listen to those weather reports! The bora can arrive very quickly, very strongly - but it's predictable. Also look out for squalls from NW (purple sky, very fast-moving, very powerful); there were quite a few this summer and they can knock you over very easily (having said that, there haven't been any this month).

 

[gcostell]

Korcula, Mljet and Sipan all worth a visit, as mentioned.
More expensive to eat out than predicted (in 2007).