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Deleted User YDKXO
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The next day, we fuelled up in the marina (diesel costs roughly €1.10 or £0.97 per litre in Croatia ) for our cruise to our next destination, Kobas.
This was an absolutely gorgeous Italian yacht moored in the marina, polished to within an inch of its life and complete with a fat Italian mama brooding in the cockpit and pot plants.
Before heading north for Kobas, we took the opportunity to see the old city of Dubrovnik from the sea and cruised south first.
This photo shows the hills from which the city was shelled heavily by the Serb dominated Yugoslav army in 1991 during the Balkan conflict. My credit card was similarly bombed out by dinner at the Nautika restaurant
which sits in the middle of the photo on the battlements.
Then we turned north and cruised for a couple of hours inside the Elaphite islands and up the Stonski Kanal to the next BartW recommended destination at Kobas which was about as far removed from the bustle of Dubrovnik as you could get. As usual the restaurant owners were out in force to implore us to park at their quay but we recognised Niko’s restaurant and headed there.
Another day, another bloody Adriatic lobster
Niko served up a gargantuan meal of local ham and cheeses, mussels, lobster, steak and local vegs and salads. Luckily, we had 4 teenage boys to demolish it.
The next day, SWMBO and the boys headed off to the town of Ston to see the famous walls there. Niko kindly offered to ferry them up there in his battered car. As I’d seen Ston previously and as I’d noticed Niko consume about 4 cans of beer during the time it took me to drink a cup of coffee in his restaurant that morning, I decided that it was going to be a good morning to check work e-mails.
The walls at Ston date from the 1300’s and are known as the ‘European Wall of China’. They were originally built to protect the republic of Dubrovnik and the local salt pans
By lunchtime, SWMBO and the boys had returned safely from Ston with tales of Niko's wild driving! Our destination for the afternoon was Hvar Town on the island of Hvar, some 70nm away, which has become a favourite destination of ours for its lively atmosphere and huge choice of eating/drinking establishments. Unfortunately, after a long slog up the Peljesac peninsula, through the predictably windy Korculanski Kanal again and across to Hvar, we arrived too late to get a place on the town quay. So we headed over the other side of the water to the Pakleni islands and the ACI marina at Palmazana which serves as the overflow marina for Hvar Town. Palmazana is not my favourite place; last year, I’d had a stand up row with a bolshy marinero over an electricity socket . This time, I don’t know why, but we were directed to moor against a concrete quay. Whilst backing into the berth and unknown to me on the flybridge, one of the boys handed the stern line to a marinero who then tugged it as hard as he could with the result that the edge of the bathing platform got crushed under the concrete quay. Not a huge amount of damage but I had a massive sense of humour failure when I saw it, not improved by the head marinero who advised me to go and buy a bigger fender . Later that evening, the boys took one of the many water taxis across to Hvar Town whilst the boss and I walked across the island to yet another BartW recommended eaterie called Zori which turned out to be excellent.
Palmazana marina in early June. It looks very different in August
A visit earlier in the year to Hvar Town
The next day was the last day of our mini cruise. For once, we managed to leave before lunchtime and meandered around the end of Hvar island and across to the narrow channel between Brac and Solta islands before picking up fuel in Rogac and heading north west to our lunchtime anchorage at Krknas.
Non synchronised swimming
We pitched up back in our marina at Frapa to be greeted what sounded like a gun battle in the nearby town of Rogoznica. This turned out to be a wedding celebration, Croatian style.
This is what happens to old flares in Croatia. They get used to salute wedding processions
The next day, unfortunately I had to fly home for business reasons but SWMBO and the 4 teenage boys stayed on for a further 4 days.
I said that I’d give you some general impressions of Croatian boating life. I’ll start with the bad points first. The biggest problem is that there are no direct flights to any of the airports on the Croatian coast from the UK in winter, except for Dubrovnik. Med boating only works for me if the journey is as painless as possible and not having direct flights during winter is a big minus point for me. The second big minus point is the difficulty in getting maintenance work done. The people are willing enough and the labour rates modest but sometimes the ex communistical attitude to customer service does get on my nerves. The other big issue is parts which seem to take forever to be delivered and often seem to cost a lot more than the UK. Shipping parts direct from the UK is a DHL and customs nightmare, Croatia being outside the EU. Then there is the weather; the winters are colder in the Adriatic than the W Med and summers, whilst being generally settled, are often punctuated by days of strong Bora winds which also bring rain and cooler temperatures. Summer doesn’t seem to get going until May and by the end of October, it’s all over so the season isn’t really much longer than the UK. Yes we did eat well this time thanks to BartW but, in the main, Croatian restaurant food is not exactly haute cuisine although it isn’t expensive usually. In supermarkets, local produce is cheap but limited and anything imported is expensive. Then there is the boating bureaucracy. Every year you have to troop off to your local harbourmaster’s office to buy an expensive cruising vignette and get a crew list. This crew list is a real pain because every time you have guests on the boat, you have to go off to a harbourmaster’s office to get it updated . One last bad point or it could be a good point, depending on your point of view but there is very little sand in Croatia. Most shorelines are rock or stony beaches and going ashore in your tender is often not easy unless there’s a convenient quay.
Now we come to the good points. First and foremost, the cruising area is simply fantastic. There are more than 1000 islands off the Croatian coastline which means that there is a huge number of anchorages and harbours to visit. The best bit is that, unlike the W Med, you can actually plan a cruise and visit places during the high season without panicking about not having booked months ahead. The other good point about having loads of islands is that they provide generally sheltered cruising. Annual mooring charges are very reasonable compared to the W Med and the UK. I pay €9000 (£8000) a year for a 17m berth in supposedly the best marina in Croatia and I could easily get a cheaper berth elsewhere. In contrast, the daily mooring charges are often quite steep; we often pay €80-120 a night in marinas. Fuel at around €1.10/litre is also relatively cheap compared to other European countries and, as I have already mentioned, labour rates are also lower.
Other good points? Hull and sterngear fouling is considerably less than the W Med. In the Balearics, sterngear fouling could easily lose me 6 knots in boat speed in only 3 months in summer whereas I lost only about 2.5kts through the whole of last season and over winter in Croatia. Of course this may be because the water is a few degrees cooler than the W Med! I almost forgot. Unlike the W Med which is infested with the bloody things, we haven’t seen a single jellyfish of any kind since we’ve been in Croatia. One last point. Unlike most of the W Med where you get the impression that there was no development on the coastline until the 1960’s, Croatia’s coastline is full of history like the wonderfully preserved Roman amphitheatre next to the marina at Pula or the Diocletian Palace in Split or the old town in Dubrovnik, to name but a few. The Greeks, Romans, Venetians, Turks and many others have all wondered through the Balkans at some time or other. However there’s another side to Croatian history and that of course is the Balkan War which ended in some areas not much more than 10 yrs ago. There are few reminders of this on the coast but drive inland and you’ll come across villages where all of the houses have been burnt and abandoned and where it is apparent that ethnic cleansing took place. There are even uncleared minefields in some areas. Croatia is trying to move on from this conflict but when you talk to some locals about it, you sense very much that the memories haven’t faded.
This was an absolutely gorgeous Italian yacht moored in the marina, polished to within an inch of its life and complete with a fat Italian mama brooding in the cockpit and pot plants.
Before heading north for Kobas, we took the opportunity to see the old city of Dubrovnik from the sea and cruised south first.
This photo shows the hills from which the city was shelled heavily by the Serb dominated Yugoslav army in 1991 during the Balkan conflict. My credit card was similarly bombed out by dinner at the Nautika restaurant
which sits in the middle of the photo on the battlements.
Then we turned north and cruised for a couple of hours inside the Elaphite islands and up the Stonski Kanal to the next BartW recommended destination at Kobas which was about as far removed from the bustle of Dubrovnik as you could get. As usual the restaurant owners were out in force to implore us to park at their quay but we recognised Niko’s restaurant and headed there.
Another day, another bloody Adriatic lobster
Niko served up a gargantuan meal of local ham and cheeses, mussels, lobster, steak and local vegs and salads. Luckily, we had 4 teenage boys to demolish it.
The next day, SWMBO and the boys headed off to the town of Ston to see the famous walls there. Niko kindly offered to ferry them up there in his battered car. As I’d seen Ston previously and as I’d noticed Niko consume about 4 cans of beer during the time it took me to drink a cup of coffee in his restaurant that morning, I decided that it was going to be a good morning to check work e-mails.
The walls at Ston date from the 1300’s and are known as the ‘European Wall of China’. They were originally built to protect the republic of Dubrovnik and the local salt pans
By lunchtime, SWMBO and the boys had returned safely from Ston with tales of Niko's wild driving! Our destination for the afternoon was Hvar Town on the island of Hvar, some 70nm away, which has become a favourite destination of ours for its lively atmosphere and huge choice of eating/drinking establishments. Unfortunately, after a long slog up the Peljesac peninsula, through the predictably windy Korculanski Kanal again and across to Hvar, we arrived too late to get a place on the town quay. So we headed over the other side of the water to the Pakleni islands and the ACI marina at Palmazana which serves as the overflow marina for Hvar Town. Palmazana is not my favourite place; last year, I’d had a stand up row with a bolshy marinero over an electricity socket . This time, I don’t know why, but we were directed to moor against a concrete quay. Whilst backing into the berth and unknown to me on the flybridge, one of the boys handed the stern line to a marinero who then tugged it as hard as he could with the result that the edge of the bathing platform got crushed under the concrete quay. Not a huge amount of damage but I had a massive sense of humour failure when I saw it, not improved by the head marinero who advised me to go and buy a bigger fender . Later that evening, the boys took one of the many water taxis across to Hvar Town whilst the boss and I walked across the island to yet another BartW recommended eaterie called Zori which turned out to be excellent.
Palmazana marina in early June. It looks very different in August
A visit earlier in the year to Hvar Town
The next day was the last day of our mini cruise. For once, we managed to leave before lunchtime and meandered around the end of Hvar island and across to the narrow channel between Brac and Solta islands before picking up fuel in Rogac and heading north west to our lunchtime anchorage at Krknas.
Non synchronised swimming
We pitched up back in our marina at Frapa to be greeted what sounded like a gun battle in the nearby town of Rogoznica. This turned out to be a wedding celebration, Croatian style.
This is what happens to old flares in Croatia. They get used to salute wedding processions
The next day, unfortunately I had to fly home for business reasons but SWMBO and the 4 teenage boys stayed on for a further 4 days.
I said that I’d give you some general impressions of Croatian boating life. I’ll start with the bad points first. The biggest problem is that there are no direct flights to any of the airports on the Croatian coast from the UK in winter, except for Dubrovnik. Med boating only works for me if the journey is as painless as possible and not having direct flights during winter is a big minus point for me. The second big minus point is the difficulty in getting maintenance work done. The people are willing enough and the labour rates modest but sometimes the ex communistical attitude to customer service does get on my nerves. The other big issue is parts which seem to take forever to be delivered and often seem to cost a lot more than the UK. Shipping parts direct from the UK is a DHL and customs nightmare, Croatia being outside the EU. Then there is the weather; the winters are colder in the Adriatic than the W Med and summers, whilst being generally settled, are often punctuated by days of strong Bora winds which also bring rain and cooler temperatures. Summer doesn’t seem to get going until May and by the end of October, it’s all over so the season isn’t really much longer than the UK. Yes we did eat well this time thanks to BartW but, in the main, Croatian restaurant food is not exactly haute cuisine although it isn’t expensive usually. In supermarkets, local produce is cheap but limited and anything imported is expensive. Then there is the boating bureaucracy. Every year you have to troop off to your local harbourmaster’s office to buy an expensive cruising vignette and get a crew list. This crew list is a real pain because every time you have guests on the boat, you have to go off to a harbourmaster’s office to get it updated . One last bad point or it could be a good point, depending on your point of view but there is very little sand in Croatia. Most shorelines are rock or stony beaches and going ashore in your tender is often not easy unless there’s a convenient quay.
Now we come to the good points. First and foremost, the cruising area is simply fantastic. There are more than 1000 islands off the Croatian coastline which means that there is a huge number of anchorages and harbours to visit. The best bit is that, unlike the W Med, you can actually plan a cruise and visit places during the high season without panicking about not having booked months ahead. The other good point about having loads of islands is that they provide generally sheltered cruising. Annual mooring charges are very reasonable compared to the W Med and the UK. I pay €9000 (£8000) a year for a 17m berth in supposedly the best marina in Croatia and I could easily get a cheaper berth elsewhere. In contrast, the daily mooring charges are often quite steep; we often pay €80-120 a night in marinas. Fuel at around €1.10/litre is also relatively cheap compared to other European countries and, as I have already mentioned, labour rates are also lower.
Other good points? Hull and sterngear fouling is considerably less than the W Med. In the Balearics, sterngear fouling could easily lose me 6 knots in boat speed in only 3 months in summer whereas I lost only about 2.5kts through the whole of last season and over winter in Croatia. Of course this may be because the water is a few degrees cooler than the W Med! I almost forgot. Unlike the W Med which is infested with the bloody things, we haven’t seen a single jellyfish of any kind since we’ve been in Croatia. One last point. Unlike most of the W Med where you get the impression that there was no development on the coastline until the 1960’s, Croatia’s coastline is full of history like the wonderfully preserved Roman amphitheatre next to the marina at Pula or the Diocletian Palace in Split or the old town in Dubrovnik, to name but a few. The Greeks, Romans, Venetians, Turks and many others have all wondered through the Balkans at some time or other. However there’s another side to Croatian history and that of course is the Balkan War which ended in some areas not much more than 10 yrs ago. There are few reminders of this on the coast but drive inland and you’ll come across villages where all of the houses have been burnt and abandoned and where it is apparent that ethnic cleansing took place. There are even uncleared minefields in some areas. Croatia is trying to move on from this conflict but when you talk to some locals about it, you sense very much that the memories haven’t faded.
