The regular story of a sailor’s life is finding places to hide from the wind. We left Olib and headed to Jasonova where we spent a couple of days. The sunsets here where quite amazing.
Just 30 mins from here was Nin. It was a lovely village with cobbled streets. There was a statue of Gregory Nin. His foot is very shiny as rubbing it is said to bring good luck. Gregory Nin was the Bishop of Nin in the early 900’s which at the time was a major cultural, political and religious centre. The Bishop opposed the Latinization of the local population and so in 926 began holding services in Croatian rather than Latin as many could not understand Latin. This went against the rulings of the church and the Pope. This was a major turning point in history and was regarded as the foundation for the formation of the Croatian nationality. The statue, which is 25 feet tall, was erected in 1929 to commemorate the 1000th anniversary of his first service held in the Croatian language.
Our second visitors of the season. Dave and Deb, were arriving in a few days. It’s always a feat to find where to pick people up without going into a marina. We found a nice little spot in Sukosan where we stayed anchored for the night before the next day heading to the islands. We’d read about a beach restaurant that was very popular at Babac which was a very small bay. The menu was steak, chicken or fish which the guy cooked on the BBQ and served up with chips.
We had the best meal we’ve had in all of Croatia on Pasman Island. A restaurant called Konoba San Marko
After a great few days it was time for Dave and Deb to leave and for us to start heading towards Trogir where Jessica and Shelly were joining us.
This area of Croatia is very busy. One of the more popular spots, I say popular, that’s a bit of an understatement, is the “Blue Lagoon”. Ian said we’d take the girls there. We arrived and it was choc a block filled with mainly small motor boats. The yachts were a bit further out. Yep you guessed, not us, Ian spotted a spot right in the middle and that’s where we dropped anchor amongst the small boats.
Trogir itself was lovely so we took a walk in for dinner. Ian waiting patiently while the girls were taking photos.
It was all too soon and time for Jessica and Shelly to go home. We spent a few days making our way down the coast. One of our stops was was Okuklje on the island of Mljet which had various restaurants with jetties to moor on. We had a rough trip to here with lots of rain and wind on the nose. The water was washing all over the saloon windows so we were glad to arrive in this pretty secluded bay.
Our next visitors, Graham and Lesley, were meeting us just outside Dubrovnik at Zaton. We arrived a few days earlier. Zaton was very nice but there was a tendency for Katabatic winds which are strong winds flowing down the side of steep mountains/hillside and occur at night. You could set your watch by them. Strong winds are bad enough during the day but at night it’s not great.
We spent a few days visiting some bays and then finished up with a day and night in Dubrovnik. We moored up in the marine so we didn’t have to worry about the boat.
Dubrovnik is known for it’s old city wall which takes a couple of hours to wander along. To deter too many visitors they’ve hiked the price to walk around them up to €35 per person. It nearly put Ian off, but after seeing them decided we couldn’t come to Dubrovnik and not walk the wall. I had already been some years ago but off we trotted. The views are pretty stunning.
After dinner we decided to visit the Buza Bars. Buza means “hole” in old Dubrovnik dialect and so you have to go through a hole in the wall, hence why they are called Buza bars. They sit on the cliff side and we did literally in one of them. One of them had a spot where you can jump from the rocks. Ian demonstrated how it could be done but it was dark.
We enjoyed Croatia and the stories we’d heard about being difficult to find spots to anchor, even being charged to anchor, only mooring buoys available, didn’t materialise. There are places that are full of buoys but there are plenty of other places and we always found somewhere. We can understand why so many choose Croatia to go sailing.
Graham and Lesley left us to go home and we checked out of Croatia, stopping the Schengen clock and headed to Montenegro.
August 2023