Recently my sister came to visit, and in addition to the normal Sarajevo guided tour which we have developed (walk through the old town and up to the fort, drink at the brewery, cevapi, the tunnel museum etc...) we managed to get to the coast for a few days.
Friends of ours had hired a sailing boat for a week, and invited us to join them for three days, and of course we jumped at the opportunity, leaving my boyfriend in Sarajevo... at work!
So, we left Sarajevo early and embarked on the five journey to Split. It is a lovely journey, down to Mostar and then up to Medjugorje (the second most popular pilgrimage site after Lourdes), we crossed the boarder at Crni Grm and the headed north. We were advised to keep an eye for the motorway.. However somehow missed this, so found ourselves on the coast road... beautiful, but blimey it is a long way!
We arrived in Split at lunchtime, parked the car at the ACI Marina and then jumped on a water taxi over to the main port. Having grabbed a sandwich, we boarded our Jadrolinja ferry to Stari Grad on the Island of Hvar. The ferry was great, fairly similar to a English cross-Channel ferry, but very prompt and more importantly sold ice cold Karlovacko beer. 2 hours later we were pulling into Stari Grad, a really excellent service for only £4.90.
The first night was spent in port, at Stari Grad, and what a beautiful little town. The harbor was surrounded by lovely cafes, bars and restaurants, it was not too busy. We enjoyed a delicious meal and settled down to our first night on the open seas (well almost)!!
We were up early the next day, went and got some breakfast supplies (and more beers) and took to the open seas... sadly there was not a huge amount of wind, so we motored out and the attempted to put the sails up, but didn’t get very far. We had a couple of swimming stops, and my-oh-my the Adriatic was cold! Around lunchtime we found a wonderful little bay off Hvar Island, so we dropped anchor and had some lunch. Eventually, we ended up staying the night in the bay (photos below), drinking, eating and chatting on deck!
The final day offered slightly better wind, therefore we were able to get the sails up. We made haste for another bay at lunchtime and then headed across to Brac to the town of Milner where we had to fill up with fuel and a much needed ice creams!! The final leg of the journey was across the Split Gap (between the Islands of Solta and Brac) and back to Split for an evening in at the harbor. The wind was perfect so we got the sails up and by this point in the trip, we were becoming a quite effective crew! My sister was particularly confident at the helm!
The Skipper's most challenging part of the trip was trying to reverse park into a space in the marina... not easy to reverse a 32ft yacht at the best of time, but compounded somewhat by all the people from all the boats around stopping to watch...! I can best describe a night in Split Marina, a bit like an 'posh' caravanning site... lots of people living out of little formica cabins, making trips to a from the marina shower blocks, with excessive drinking, late nights and early mornings!
We had a truly fantastic few days, and fingers crossed we will do the same again over the next couple of years, next time I might take my boyfriend with me!!
Friends of ours had hired a sailing boat for a week, and invited us to join them for three days, and of course we jumped at the opportunity, leaving my boyfriend in Sarajevo... at work!
So, we left Sarajevo early and embarked on the five journey to Split. It is a lovely journey, down to Mostar and then up to Medjugorje (the second most popular pilgrimage site after Lourdes), we crossed the boarder at Crni Grm and the headed north. We were advised to keep an eye for the motorway.. However somehow missed this, so found ourselves on the coast road... beautiful, but blimey it is a long way!
We arrived in Split at lunchtime, parked the car at the ACI Marina and then jumped on a water taxi over to the main port. Having grabbed a sandwich, we boarded our Jadrolinja ferry to Stari Grad on the Island of Hvar. The ferry was great, fairly similar to a English cross-Channel ferry, but very prompt and more importantly sold ice cold Karlovacko beer. 2 hours later we were pulling into Stari Grad, a really excellent service for only £4.90.
The first night was spent in port, at Stari Grad, and what a beautiful little town. The harbor was surrounded by lovely cafes, bars and restaurants, it was not too busy. We enjoyed a delicious meal and settled down to our first night on the open seas (well almost)!!
We were up early the next day, went and got some breakfast supplies (and more beers) and took to the open seas... sadly there was not a huge amount of wind, so we motored out and the attempted to put the sails up, but didn’t get very far. We had a couple of swimming stops, and my-oh-my the Adriatic was cold! Around lunchtime we found a wonderful little bay off Hvar Island, so we dropped anchor and had some lunch. Eventually, we ended up staying the night in the bay (photos below), drinking, eating and chatting on deck!
The final day offered slightly better wind, therefore we were able to get the sails up. We made haste for another bay at lunchtime and then headed across to Brac to the town of Milner where we had to fill up with fuel and a much needed ice creams!! The final leg of the journey was across the Split Gap (between the Islands of Solta and Brac) and back to Split for an evening in at the harbor. The wind was perfect so we got the sails up and by this point in the trip, we were becoming a quite effective crew! My sister was particularly confident at the helm!
The Skipper's most challenging part of the trip was trying to reverse park into a space in the marina... not easy to reverse a 32ft yacht at the best of time, but compounded somewhat by all the people from all the boats around stopping to watch...! I can best describe a night in Split Marina, a bit like an 'posh' caravanning site... lots of people living out of little formica cabins, making trips to a from the marina shower blocks, with excessive drinking, late nights and early mornings!
We had a truly fantastic few days, and fingers crossed we will do the same again over the next couple of years, next time I might take my boyfriend with me!!
This sounds like it was a truly fantastic vacation, thank you for sharing this with us Emily. The pictures are all so beautiful, I have really wanted to go sailing in Croatia for a long time. After reading about your experience I'm definitely going to try to plan a trip, maybe next summer.
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