Two Photos from Croatia

RichardS

RichardS

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We arrived home yesterday after a lovely 2 weeks in the sun, although not much sailing due to technical problems.

Just looking through the photos this afternoon, two seemed interesting.

The first shows swans swimming by the quay side in Rogoznica. I've seen swans before in Sibenik and Skradin but the water there is fresh/brackish because of the Krka river outfall. However, I can't ever recall seeing mute swans on proper sea water before. In fact, I didn't realise until now that they could live on salt water. :confused:

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The second shows the church of St George right at the top of Primosten "island" just as the sun dropped behind it. We were just in the right spot at the right second but the photo came out better than I expected without any photoshopping or adjusting.

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The temperature hit 30 C as we crossed the Alps on Friday which is the highest I can ever remember at that height, even though we have crossed many times in July and August, and although we seem to have returned to great weather in the UK today I can't wait to go back.

Richard
 
Maybe I'm imagining it, but I'm sure I used to see swans around Chichester Harbour as a kid?

Does seem odd to see them in the Med, though. I had no idea they lived in that part of the world.

Pete
 
prv said:
Maybe I'm imagining it, but I'm sure I used to see swans around Chichester Harbour as a kid?

Does seem odd to see them in the Med, though. I had no idea they lived in that part of the world.

Pete
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Very probably

The two below were snapped outside Paynes boatyard ( I think they are mute swans ... they were pretty quiet anyway)

I have seen presumabaly immature birds in quite large numbers at Dell quay. Alo seen them in Bembridge.


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Love the picture of Primosten.

We came back 5 days ago from a week of cracking sailing (and some motoring) with 250 miles covered and a great dinner at Primosten after watching the sun go down. Although we didn't plan to go back until the end of June, it was so good to be back in Croatia after a few years we are out again for a long weekend on 1st June - partly to fix the things which broke over Winter.
 
Mute swans are fairly commonplace on salt water. Although they need access to freshwater for drinking, they can live perfectly well on marine weed and small critters. Various places in the UK have saltwater swan communities, and they're particularly common in the southern Baltic.

A bay on Skiathos, Greece has not only a family of mutes that regularly scrounge bread from anchored boats, but also a solitary black swan, indigenous to Western Australia. (It's the logo for Swan lager.) The latter (the swan, not the lager) had a cobber which disappeared a couple of years ago, since when the mutes seem to have adopted it. Aw.
 
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We'll be in Primosten and Rogoznica (plus Skradin, Zlarin, Kaprije amongst others) next week. Any top/up to date tips or reviews?!:)

Interested to know where you moored in Primosten and Rogoznica - we are on a cat so avoiding Kremik and and Frapa due to cost, hoping to get on the town quays.
 
macd said:
Mute swans are fairly commonplace on salt water. Although they need access to freshwater for drinking, they can live perfectly well on marine weed and small critters. Various places in the UK have saltwater swan communities, and they're particularly common in the southern Baltic.

A bay on Skiathos, Greece has not only a family of mutes that regularly scrounge bread from anchored boats, but also a solitary black swan, indigenous to Western Australia. (It's the logo for Swan lager.) The latter (the swan, not the lager) had a cobber which disappeared a couple of years ago, since when the mutes seem to have adopted it. Aw.
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That's very interesting. I'm not surprised about swans in the Baltic as I understand that is brackish water like that coming down from the Krka river where there are lots of swans. However, Skiathos will be like Rogoznica and will be proper salt water like Vic's photo so I've learned something.

Can proper sea birds drink seawater? Presumably yes as where would an Albatross find fresh water? That would suggest that freshwater birds like swans are moving to salt water environments because of the benefits of being close to humans .... a bit like urban foxes.

Richard
 
Swans in Portsmouth Harbour, Newtown Creek, Poole Harbour, etc. seem to be able to spot boats with children on board as better prospects for getting fed. They also like to drink fresh water as we noticed when rinsing off children after swimming - the swans were catching the fresh water that ran off the decks.
 
Bellacruiser said:
We'll be in Primosten and Rogoznica (plus Skradin, Zlarin, Kaprije amongst others) next week. Any top/up to date tips or reviews?!:)

Interested to know where you moored in Primosten and Rogoznica - we are on a cat so avoiding Kremik and and Frapa due to cost, hoping to get on the town quays.
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You should have a great time as the weather is lovely at the moment and all the bays and quays are extremely quiet so you can go anywhere. You'd even be able to anchor in Hvar which would be a miracle in July or August, although it sounds like you're heading NW rather than SE.

The mooring buoys were laid in Primosten bay a few years ago but are very convenient. There was only 1 boat, a cat, on them last week and one boat on the quay. You can see that the cat is on the outermost buoy and all the others are free. The photo was taken at the beginning of our trip and the Scirroco was still dying away so the sea is a bit choppy. By the second week it was flat calm.

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We reckon that the best restaurant in Primosten is The Mediterrane in the middle of the town a short way up the hill. It's not a huge selection of dishes but that reflects the quality. We always go at least once on each visit but it can often be full when there is room in every other restaurant, although at this time of the year there will be space. When we were in there two weeks ago the CEO of Kremik Marina and the CEO of the Service Yard were both in there. I went over to say hello and made a joke that we can now see where our fees are going. ;)

There's also a new steak restaurant just around the corner from The Mediterrane towards the quay which we tried for the first time last week. We were the only people in there (The Mediterrane was half full!) but it was also very good and a little cheaper.

When we went to Rocogniza during the first week to pay our annual "taxes" there were no buoys in the bay on the opposite side of the causeway from Frapa and there was one boat at anchor. It used to be anchoring 5 years ago and we were pleased to see the old times returning. There's a new pedestrian area and new restaurants (we went to a new pizzeria called Plank or similar which was good) plus water feature at the further end near the Harbourmaster's Office. You can see the end of the new quayside in the middle distance of the photo. It ends alongside the HM building (you can just about see the Croatian ensign behind the lamppost flying from the square building on the right). There is now a lot of mooring space along the old quay nearer the causeway and now the new.

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When we went back to Rogoznica a week later there was a boat in the bay which was re-laying all the mooring buoys! At least if you use them you know that they have been properly inspected. SailaboutVic will not be using those buoys ever again but that's another story. On this visit we intended to eat at The Siesta again which is on the road towards Frapa but we ended up at The Atrium which is in the next block towards the marina. We reckon those are the best two restaurants in the town if you are looking for something better than pizza. :)

Richard
 
RichardS said:
Can proper sea birds drink seawater? Presumably yes as where would an Albatross find fresh water? That would suggest that freshwater birds like swans are moving to salt water environments because of the benefits of being close to humans .... a bit like urban foxes.
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Many seabirds can indeed drink salt water, and as you write, pelagic ones have little choice. The most common specialization is a salt gland above the nasal passages at the top of the bill -- very evident on species such as Fulmars. This de-salinates them by excreting hyper-saline fluids. I've no idea if this clever apparatus needs pickling, although pickled shearwaters were once a popular delicacy (well, marginally preferable to starvation) on the Isle of Man. Now we prefer kippers.
 
Thank you Richard; this is really helpful stuff! Good to hear there is plenty of mooring in Rogoznica too; hopefully the weather holds and it's fairly quiet - too early and cold for the Italians although it will be British school holidays. We are aiming for the quays if we can as we'd rather avoid multiple shuttlings in the tender, we'll be a crew of 8 including some "older" family members who are new to sailing and aren't so keen on the idea of the dinghy/climbing in and we won't all fit in one trip in any event!

We are headed northwest and keen to keep mooring costs down with the cat as this is a bonus trip. To cut a long story short we also are headed out of Trogir in late June (doing Vis, Hvar, Brac, Solta etc) on a monohull, and out of Dubrovnik in mid-Sept. Both were booked and paid for etc when I won a free week charter with the Moorings (entered their competition at the London boat show); hence the cat and different route!
 
Bellacruiser said:
.... when I won a free week charter with the Moorings (entered their competition at the London boat show); hence the cat and different route!
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Well done. That's a great competition prize. :)

We were in Marina Agana for about 5 years before The Moorings/Sunsail took over the whole place as our cat was a Moorings managed ownership boat. We're happy to be in Kremik as it is a more sheltered marina and Primosten is a more interesting place than Marina (the town) and the hoist will take our boat, but the big advantage of Marina is that all the restaurants/supermarkets/bakers etc are a 5 minute walk from the marina whereas Primosten is an hours walk from Marina Kremik. It's not a problem for us as we have a car but not great for airborne visitors who are rather tied to the marina restaurant and supermarket.

Richard
 
RichardS said:
Well done. That's a great competition prize. :)

We were in Marina Agana for about 5 years before The Moorings/Sunsail took over the whole place as our cat was a Moorings managed ownership boat. We're happy to be in Kremik as it is a more sheltered marina and Primosten is a more interesting place than Marina (the town) and the hoist will take our boat, but the big advantage of Marina is that all the restaurants/supermarkets/bakers etc are a 5 minute walk from the marina whereas Primosten is an hours walk from Marina Kremik. It's not a problem for us as we have a car but not great for airborne visitors who are rather tied to the marina restaurant and supermarket.

Richard
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Agree with all that and I'm still highly irritated by Kremik stopping the half hourly shuttle bus to Primosten (25 kuna return).

I was pleased to see our old shuttle bus driver still employed though, waiting on the end pontoon to direct boats as they came in. He used to play a lot of martial sounding folk music on the short journey and the only time I ever saw him smile was when a loud opinionated sailor fell off the bus.

Agree on the best restaurant in Primosten and that's the one we went to last week. Best restaurant in Croatia that we found used to be Dmitris Palace on Korcula. Same owner but new chef and called LD Terrace I think - the food had gone from suprisingly good to superb. Their tasting menu absolutely up there with top places in London and Hong Kong - that chef will get stolen fast. We have also heard about a family-owned truffle restaurant up in Istria owned by the main Croatian truffle exporter so that's on our list for this Summer, even if an hours drive inland from Pula.

For a week's charter north from Split area though, if harbour walls are a must then I like Sibenik for a night out but tend to prefer the anchorages around there as much as possible. Maybe lunch at an anchorage with swimming for the fitter types then tie up for the evening.
 
RichardS said:
Well done. That's a great competition prize. :)

We were in Marina Agana for about 5 years before The Moorings/Sunsail took over the whole place as our cat was a Moorings managed ownership boat. We're happy to be in Kremik as it is a more sheltered marina and Primosten is a more interesting place than Marina (the town) and the hoist will take our boat, but the big advantage of Marina is that all the restaurants/supermarkets/bakers etc are a 5 minute walk from the marina whereas Primosten is an hours walk from Marina Kremik. It's not a problem for us as we have a car but not great for airborne visitors who are rather tied to the marina restaurant and supermarket.

Richard
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Thank you - we are very lucky! And the Moorings have been great and very generous with the prize, no sticking us on the oldest boat in the fleet or anything and we are hoping for a really great trip!

We'll be arriving on the Saturday morning and provisioning on foot so it suits us to be near to the supermarket etc in Marina (the confusingly named town :p).

I have a crafty plan to leave the in-laws in cafe and empty the contents my wheely hand luggage into spare bag so we can use that for the heavy items (er...bottles :o) plus go equipped with various Ikea bags and sturdy totes to carry 3-4 days provisioning for 8 people... I'm in charge of that side of things and the other half does the sailing (to where I tell him haha)
 
There are several pairs of swans in Portsmouth Harbour, and the pair in Haslar Marina often turn up for a drink when you are stowing your hose after topping up the water tank.
 
Bellacruiser said:
I have a crafty plan to leave the in-laws in cafe and empty the contents my wheely hand luggage into spare bag so we can use that for the heavy items (er...bottles :o) plus go equipped with various Ikea bags and sturdy totes to carry 3-4 days provisioning for 8 people... I'm in charge of that side of things and the other half does the sailing (to where I tell him haha)
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I'm sure you'll be buying bottles of Grasevina or Malvasia and they are both good local white wines and so cheap (£2.50 a litre) that we always bring several cases back home. :o

If you're buying beer then the Croatian beers are great, of course (Osjuko, Karlovacko etc) and when they first introduced lemon Radler versions a few years ago we quite liked them but were not totally convinced. However, about 2 years ago the beer companies introduced a grapefruit variant usually called Greip and it is great. We now always buy a tray of plain beer and a tray of Greip although it's not available everywhere. I've never heard of it in the UK but give it a try.

Many of the supermarkets now sell cider. In the UK we like Somersby cider and it's available in cans in Croatia .... but don't be fooled as it's nothing like the UK version and has a really strong artificial apple flavour. My wife says it reminds her of apple flavoured washing-up liquid and she's right. Don't buy a tray of that stuff until you tried a single can! :ambivalence: Strongbow is available in bottles and that is much better.

It sounds from this as if all we do is drink alcohol .... and that's pretty close to the truth! ;)

Richard
 
DJE said:
Swans in Portsmouth Harbour, Newtown Creek, Poole Harbour, etc. seem to be able to spot boats with children on board as better prospects for getting fed. They also like to drink fresh water as we noticed when rinsing off children after swimming - the swans were catching the fresh water that ran off the decks.
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In Christchurch they come up to moored boats in the morning and tap on the hull with their beaks, expecting to get fed.
 
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