After a long and wonderful sail throughout the Croatian coast - from south to north and back down south again, we have now returned to our home base marina ACI Slano. After boat cleaning, laundry, and boat maintenance we will start to edit and go through our hundreds of video files and push out a couple of videos on our Sea Bee Sailing YouTube channel. Look out for these videos to be released in the next couple of weeks. In this blog post, I’ll share some highlights from the first half of our 30-day sail throughout Croatia. Below is a map that shows our sail path during our first two weeks.
After stopping at Korcula and Hvar islands (which we explored previously in May), we set out to do our first overnight passage. The plan was to sail from Palmizana (Hvar) to the city of Pula on the Istria Peninsula. We left as soon as the sun was coming up. This would be a 200 + nautical mile passage that would take two full days and 1 overnight non-stop and we were excited to do our first overnight passage together. However, about a couple of hours into our sail two things happened. First, we had no wind and were motor sailing. Second, the whole coast began to be littered with fishing traps. One of us had to stay on the bow to keep watch as we dodged each fishing net and trap. The last thing we wanted to deal with was for one of these nets to get tangled into our prop. (When we are motor sailing our propeller is exposed in the water when we have our engine running. When we are sailing and our engine is off our prop folds up.) We soon realized the wind would not be coming in the evening and we would have to motor sail throughout the evening and in the dark if we were to continue. Our only option to avoid the traps would be to go out into the middle of the Adriatic to get far away from the coast. With light to no wind + dealing with all the large container ships in the middle of the sea, we didn’t much care for this option. The decision was made to abort our overnight passage and look for a place along the coast to spend the night. This is how we ended up in the Kornati Islands – a very magical and unique place that remains one of my favorite places in Croatia.
The Kornati islands consist of over 100 mostly uninhabited islands, islets, reefs, and craggy rocks, with cliffs that plunge dramatically into sparkling clear water. There are just a few dozen houses available for rental in the summer months and a couple of restaurants open in summer. A few locals cultivate olives, figs, grapes, and honey. We bought some delicious honey and olive oil made by a young man who was born and still lives year-round on one of the islands. This is highly unusual as conditions get very rugged and harsh during the winter months.
I immediately fell in love with this place and wanted to spend a few days exploring and anchoring in its private bays. However, we soon discovered it's a national park and as with all national parks in Croatia, the price to enjoy them is very high. About $100 USD per night just to be allowed to anchor your boat here. That's a robbery! We were told the rangers monitor the islands in their speed boats and have the equipment to track and see all boats in the area, so if you don't register your boat and pay online it's likely they will find you, charge you and even penalize you with additional fines for not registering. We sadly said goodbye to this lovely place and sailed on towards the Istria Peninsula.
We enjoyed a few days at anchor in some lovely quiet bays before arriving in Pomer our first stop on the Istria Peninsula. The first thing we noticed as we approached the Istria coast is this area is a camping paradise. There are so many beautiful and well-maintained camping sites all along the water. From glamping to car & tent sites, these beautiful campgrounds rival the best camping spots I've seen in America and we certainly have some good ones in California. I'm sure some Croatians were enjoying these primo spots but we mostly saw and heard Austrians and Germans. Lucky them as it’s just a short drive for them into northern Croatia.
After Pomer, we headed further north to the cities of Pula and Rovinj. We had been sailing for about a week + at this point and unfortunately, we had very light wind so a lot of motor sailing was happening and we were getting a little bored but the wind picked up on our way to Pula and we had a great sail on a beam reach! The thing about sailing in the Med is either too much wind or no wind, so when it's somewhere in the middle it's magic!
Pula is the largest city in Istria and has a long tradition of winemaking, fishing, and shipbuilding. It is also home to many ancient Roman buildings, including the well-preserved amphitheater, which is among the six largest surviving Roman arenas in the world. It’s still in use today during summer film festivals. One of the first things we noticed about this area in Croatia is that the food is better. Thank you, Italy! Not only does the architecture have Venetian influences but so does its cuisine and truffles are everywhere!
After a great meal and night in Pula, we headed to Rovinj a popular tourist resort/city and an active fishing port. The town is officially bilingual, Italian and Croatian. Speed ferries and sailboats bring the many Italians here from across the Adriatic. The town's main center is a pedestrian area on Carrera Street, with many shops, bars, restaurants, and art galleries. A farmer's market is located at the edge of the historic part of town where we bought the most amazing produce and fish. There is a lot of money and flash in this town. We stayed at the ACI Marina there and it was like a little mini-Monte Carlo with the most Mega Yachts we saw outside Split, Croatia. They put Sea Bee and us out of the way in a little corner of the marina. I can confirm we were the only ones with laundry drying off the sides of our boat. Not many liveaboards like us around here. Ha Ha! Laundry is another expensive discovery in Croatia. It's about $10-USD 15 per load to wash and another $10-$15 to dry. An investment in a washer onboard Sea Bee is now worth considering. Kivanc is finally coming around to this idea - yeah!
After we left Istria we headed over to the island of Cres & later near the city Rijeka. We docked at Opatija – near Rijeka so we could connect with Boris a Croatian friend Kivanc made over a year and a half ago through an Elan Sailboat forum when he was looking for boats. Boris is a big reason we ended up buying an Elan. He gave Kivanc so much information and great feedback regarding Elan Sailboats. Boris lives near Rijeka and since we were in the area we wanted to meet up and show him Sea Bee. We had him on board for drinks and went out for dinner that evening. The man is an absolute wealth of knowledge about anything connected to Elan sailboats, sailing, and Croatia in general. He spent hours inspecting our boat and answering all our many questions. We learned he is a Captain on an LNG (gas tanker) and travels all over the world. No wonder he has so much deep sailing knowledge + lots of good sea stories!
After we said goodbye to Boris we found our favorite anchorage to date in all of Croatia. We anchored at Krk island in a small bay called Uvala Mala Jana. I don’t have any photos to add here but Kivanc has some great drone footage that will be seen in an upcoming video. The bay has the clearest blue water, tons of fish, and the sound of cicadas fill the air from the nearby trees. It’s paradise! The funny thing that was happening over the last several days of sailing (since we left Pula), was this boat full of naked Austrians would always come and find us at the end of each day. They would either dock next to us at a marina or anchor near us. And wouldn’t you know it, about an hour after we set the anchor at this very secluded spot, the naked Austrians rolled in and dropped their anchor right next to us! Just them and us in paradise! Ha! But that was the end of them -they were never seen of again...
To read Part 2 - following this link: