A few days ago we were wondering why Croatia had so little wind compared to Greece just a few hundred miles south. Croatia must have heard us saying that because it responded by delivering three straight days of flawless sailing winds. We’ve been using the wind to do some serious island hopping and we continue to be blown away by the character of the small marina cities that line the island coasts, many of which barely even appear on the map and are very unspoiled by modern things (like cars, tourism, etc.), so you feel like you’ve stepped back in time a few hundred years. It’s a boater’s paradise and our only regret is that we can’t spend more time exploring the place. Uncle Bob couldn’t have picked a better week to join us.
Before we came to Croatia many yachties warned us about how expensive it is and how you have to be rich to explore Croatia. Our experience is the opposite – the prices for food are reasonable and the marina fees (around 100 euros per night) are easy to avoid by dropping the anchor just outside the harbor, which we do almost every night. We’ve found we can be very aggressive in dropping our anchor wherever we want and nobody ever seems to bother us – this, we think, is the key to inexpensive sailing. Because the cost savings are so compelling for being on the anchor, we’ve decided to extend our anchor chain from 75 meters (250 feet) to 150 meters (500 feet) so we can anchor in deeper water and have more options for where we spend the night. That will not be a cheap upgrade, but it will likely pay itself back many times over the next two years.
Our travels for the past three days have covered three of the most beautiful islands in Croatia: Vis, Hvar, and Brac (where we are now in the city of Bol). Today we head further south towards Korkula and we aim to be back in Dubrovnik on Friday where Bob’s flight departs and where we will begin our long passage back to Greece.