Sailing, Croatia

Tour Taken: Sail Croatia
Date of stay: August 2005
Travelled with: Friends 
Tour or pre planned: Tour

To be honest, I hadn’t heard all that much about Croatia as a tourism hot spot until shortly before departing. I wasn’t going to go, due to my ever climbing mountain of credit card debt at the time, but after a bit of arm twisting I decided at the last minute to hop on board and bite the credit card bullet. Oh boy am I glad I did.

Croatia is a paradise. Maybe not quite up there with the Caribbean or the Maldives, but it’s a paradise nonetheless. Located in Central and South Eastern Europe, it is nestled between Italy, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Hungary, and to me the culture there felt like a mixture of all of these places. It feels a little less Eastern-European though, and more like a pumped up hedonistic Italy on steroids (along the coastal cities of the Adriatic anyway).

Our group booked a 7-day cruise through Sail Croatia, who run different cruises along the warm waters of the Adriatic Sea. We started out in Split, then made our way to Makarska-Mljet-Dubrovnik-Korcula-Hvar and then ended up back in Split again.

There are several routes you can take, but I’d say this is the most popular due to the stunning towns Korcula, Hvar and Dubrovnik being on the list. 

Now things may have changed a bit since 2005, but there are a couple of things I beg you to consider before setting foot on your boat:

1. Book a boat with a bar and drinks on board. You’ll have a never ending supply of ice cold beer at cheap prices. If you book a BYO boat, you’ll be drinking warm beer and will eventually be stuck out in the ocean with a case of the dry mouth having run out of beer.
2. When you first step onto the boat, push everyone else out of the way (women and children included) and ensure you get a cabin as far away as possible from the engine room. Not only will you sleep longer due to less engine noise at 5am, but you’ll breathe in O2 instead of diesel fumes.
   
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