We finished our last passage in Croatia to the beautiful islands of Lastovo. This island paradise is now a protective national park and only attracts a light sprinkling of tourists in the summer. The islands consist of the main island Lastovo with an additional 46 tiny islands in its archipelago. Mostly charter and private boats come to visit and the rest arrive by ferry, a 3-4 hour ride from Split or Dubrovnik. It's Croatia's most remote inhabited island with a population of less than a thousand.
People come to Lastovo to enjoy nature. The island has beautiful bays with the best snorkeling we experienced in all of Croatia. Scuba diving is also a popular activity here. The islands offer excellent hiking and biking trails with incredible sweeping views of the sea and nearby islands. Lastovo also markets itself as ‘the island of bright stars’ with the island having been declared by astronomers as the most beautiful starry sky in the whole of Europe. This is due to the island having one of the darkest skies on the continent, as well as having low light pollution. We can confirm the stars are magnificent.
Like the island of Vis in Croatia, Lastovo was also closed off to civilians under Yugoslavia as it was the site of army bases. The islands only started allowing visitors in 1988. There are submarine tunnels from WWII found throughout the island that you can explore and enjoy a swim inside.
We spent a week circumnavigating around this special place and anchoring in its stunning bays. Most people live in Lastovo village and Ubli. Lastovo Village is a vertical maze of old stone houses with imaginative chimneys and flower-covered, walled alleys clinging to the inner crater of an extinct volcano. Ubli is on the west side of the island and is where the ferry terminal and port authority office are located.
Lastovo lived up to its promise of peace, nature, and tranquility most of the time…. We did experience one of our worst encounters here with obnoxious charter boats.
One day we sailed into a beautiful bay with one of the WWII submarines tunnels. We dropped our anchor, swam to shore to tie off our stern line to a tree, and then dived down into the clear water to check our anchor. Everything looked set and ready for us to spend the night – perfection! We started to enjoy a beer on deck while admiring this lovely bay. No sooner did we have our second sip, one of the dreaded charter “Man Boats” rolled in.
The man boats in the Med are always the same. They are usually German, Russian or Ukrainian but we have seen many other nationalities too. The behavior and pattern on the man boats can always be predicted. You can expect about 8-10 drunk alpha males onboard between the age of 45-65. They will be blasting bad music from a terrible playlist that consists of outdated teenage girl Euro-pop and cheesy American heavy metal music. They compete over who can be as loud as possible on the boat – everyone seems to be shooting. The jerks this day were on a 54’ sailboat and they forced their boat inside the submarine tunnel and docked inside the tunnel. There were swimmers and paddleboarders inside the tunnel at the time but these guys just shouted at everyone to get out of their way. It was a selfish and bold move. They cleared the tunnel out so one else in the bay could go inside, explore and enjoy it. We were hoping they would just stay for a few hours and leave but no they spent the night.
It should also be noted that the Croatian park rangers came by during their evening rounds. They had a few laughs with these guys and continued on their way. They ignored us when we tried to call them over to our boat. This is typical behavior with Croatian rangers, port authorities, and police – they turn a blind eye to this kind of activity. On other occasions, we have even seen the police jump onboard, share drinks with the inebriated captain, and play cards with the men on the man boats. Anyway, the loud music, yelling, laughing and heavy drinking carried on all afternoon and into the evening and by about 1:00 am we knew things were winding down when the playlist turned into their national-patriotic marching songs, arms wrapped around each other and the singalongs started. (Again, this is a very typical pattern with the man boats.) We were excited that they were going to bed fairly early but as soon as they passed out the worst snoring in the world happened. Just imagine 10 drunk men snoring inside a huge tunnel. The echo was so loud it filled the entire bay. Our earplugs barely helped drown out the snoring symphony. The next morning, they left so after a sigh of relief, we immediately jumped at the chance to go into the submarine tunnel.
It was a good thing too because shortly afterward a flotilla of three-man boats rolled in. They were just as loud, drunk, and obnoxious but at least they didn’t dock one of their boats inside the tunnel. Instead, they anchored their boats in three different corners of the bay and spent most of their time drinking, shouting across the bay at one another, racing each other in their dinghy’s and running around naked. I’ll let you guess what country they were from! I will admit we did enjoy the spectacle and had some good laughs. But eventually, the show got old and we left to go ashore and ended up enjoying an awesome hike. When we returned to the anchorage they were gone. Yes!!!!
We stayed a few more hours and enjoyed the bay. By the time early evening came around we picked up our anchor and headed to the south end of Lastovo for a nice meal and overnight stay at a place called Porto Rosso. Many sailing friends spoke highly about this restaurant and small marina and we were excited to try it. As soon as we approached the jetty to dock Sea Bee, we heard the noise and noticed all the man boats were docked on the jetty and there was one empty spot left for our boat - right next to them! I looked at Kivanc and said “No way!” He agreed, so we turned Sea Bee around, left that bay, and sailed on. Maybe another time, in another life, Porto Rosso…
Despite those naughty “Man Boats” in Lastovo, we had a great time and Lastovo remains one of our favorite sailing destinations in Croatia! After this last passage, we decided to leave Croatia and head over to Turkey. We left Sea Bee for the winter in Croatia and flew to the Aegean side of Turkey where Kivanc’s family has a summer house near the sea. The sailing season is short in Croatia and the weather was starting to turn cold. We will have another 6 + weeks of warm weather to enjoy the Turkish coast and will later head to the family house in Istanbul. We also felt like we have sailed and experienced enough of Croatia after spending 6 months there. For example, I can’t tell you how amazing it is to eat Turkish food right now!!
We will come back to Croatia in the early spring of 2022 collect Sea Bee and sail her to Montenegro, slowly throughout the Greek islands and eventually over to Turkey.
Croatia was the perfect place to start our sailing adventure and to spend our first sailing season there. The sailing is fantastic, it’s beautiful, it’s safe, clean and comfortable. Plus, we had an amazing home base marina where we could work on the boat and return to for safe harbor if the weather got crazy and a storm was coming in. Croatia turned out to be the best place for us to get back into sailing, slowly learn all about our new boat and learn how to live on board with each other in a tight/small space. Now it’s time for the kids to move on and venture out into the big world of sailing. I'm looking forward to doing longer passage making next season and I feel we are now properly prepared for it!
Here are some of the unexpected things we discovered during our first sailing season on Sea Bee in Croatia – in no particular order:
How crowded sailing is in the Mediterranean. We envisioned more isolated bays outside the popular tourist islands and towns. Well, we did experience this at first. The first half of our six months of sailing in Croatia were very unique due to Covid. Many countries were on lockdown and could not travel, so we enjoyed Croatia without the crowds for 3 months, which we later learned from Croatian sailors is highly unusual. When travel did open up it became clear there are a ton (I mean a ton) of people into sailing in this part of the world. Busy marinas and overcrowded anchorages are to be expected in normal times and especially during the summer months. Plus, with the sailing apps and websites available nowadays (like Navily and NOFOREIGNLAND) everyone is learning all the anchorages, no place seems undiscovered. Also, the trend and rumors seem to be true - more people are buying boats nowadays due to Covid and getting into sailing.
The “Man Boat” culture in the Med. We never experienced this when we chartered sailboats on multiple occasions throughout the Caribbean, Turkey, or Greece. This is a huge annoyance for many other sailors beside us. We did hear from sailing friends in Croatia that Croatia is the worst country for man boats since they have the world’s largest charter market. But we have also been told from Med sailors it happens in Greece too – something to look forward to next season…
How beautiful Croatia is. We had very high expectations of Croatia and it did not disappoint. From south to north, the country was even more beautiful and charming than we imagined.
How safe Croatia is. We never felt safer anywhere else in the world we have traveled to and we never felt like the Croatian people would rip us off or overcharge us for something at a store, or marketplace because we are tourists.
How comfortable Sea Bee is and living on a well-equipped sailboat is in general. We love our large aft cabin, the electric head (toilet), taking showers on the boat is comfortable and easy. It also amazes us that you can cook just about anything on a boat. We have a great BBQ, nice oven and stove + refrigerator and freezer. The one caveat to all of this is it gets harder when you have guests onboard for an extended period. Compared to boats people sailed 30- 50 years ago, the technology and comfort offered on boats today is incredible.
How much cleaning is involved on a sailboat. We knew everything was going to break on a sailboat and we knew we would spend half our time sailing and half our time fixing things. But to keep a perfectly clean boat the way we like it requires hours of cleaning each day. No one ever mentioned this before.
How much time and work is involved in having a YouTube channel. Filming, finding music, editing, doing SEO (creating tag words, search words) answering emails & comments, putting together a storyline, etc. It’s a huge time commitment. We have met some very lovely people through our channel and that’s been the absolute highlight and best part. We also had some good momentum and following in the beginning and that was exciting. However, we are not producers, don’t crave to be in front of the camera, or have the competitive drive to push out a video each week or two. We quit our jobs to spend our new free time sailing and traveling - not to have deadlines. We decided we will just do our YouTube videos at our own slow pace. Besides the boat cleaning is taking up hours each day! Ha Ha!
Kivanc will spend all of this fall and winter in Turkey. I am planning a solo winter visit to California. Looking forward to seeing some of you this winter! Thanks for following our adventure!