You don’t need Playmates to see the beauty of Croatian cruising

Some years ago I was invited on a press junket to cover a regatta in Croatia. It was sponsored by the Croatian edition of Playboy magazine and journalists were offered the opportunity (I’m not making his up) to sail on competing boats with Croatian Playmates. My foolish decision to pass on the offer is now on my life list of regrets—not (entirely) because I didn’t get to sail with Croatian centerfold girls, but because I didn’t get to see the glories of the coast and islands of Croatia when I first had the chance. Now I have seen them (the glories, not the girls), and I hereby put Croatia on a short list of the world’s best cruising places.

Sailors cruising the Mediterranean have long sung the praises of the Dalmatian Coast, the northeast shore of the Adriatic Sea occupied mainly by Croatia. But for those who didn’t have months to spend poking around the Med, it was more an exotic destination to read about than a place to actually go sailing. Besides, the predilection of the adjoining Balkan states to shoot at one another, and at Croatia, from time to time suggested that it might be better to experience the place vicariously.

Well, the beauty of the Dalmatian Coast hasn’t changed, but its circumstances have. Less than 15 years ago artillery shells were exploding over the quay in the heart of Dubrovnik where we moored on a cruise last November, but now peace reigns, and bareboat charter sailing has become big business, making cruising in Croatia as accessible for Americans as, say, cruising in the BVI, if you don’t factor in the jet lag.

More than 140 charter companies are registered in Croatia. Their combined fleet numbers in the thousands of boats. We saw them tucked in for the winter in various marinas, rows of Jeanneaus and Beneteaus and others, tied stern-to, gunwale to gunwale. During our off-season cruise (not on a charter boat), we had the Adriatic to ourselves, save the occasional fishing boat or ferry. But for summer cruising, plan on a lot of company.

Don’t let that put you off. Crowded marinas and anchorages would be a small price to pay to receive the gifts to be found cruising among Croatia’s 1,185 islands. The mountainous geography is spectacular and the water of the Adriatic is so astonishingly clear it makes the Caribbean seem murky in comparison. But the charm that sets Croatia apart is that to sail through its pellucid water and past its dramatic landscape is also to sail through history defined at virtually every port by works left by the ancients, markers of civilization.

We set off for Croatia from that cradle of civilization, Athens, transited the Corinth Canal through the isthmus connecting the Peloponnesian peninsula to the mainland of Greece, overnighted at small, pretty ports along the Gulfs of Corinth and Patros, cleared out of Greek customs at Corfu, and entered the Adriatic. With mountains looming to starboard in the dense morning mist, we stayed well off the protruding coast of Albania, the haunt of pirates even in recent times, before setting a nearly 200-mile-long straight-line course for Dubrovnik, there to enter Croatia and explore the 700-year-old walled city.

An immigration officer and armed customs agent came aboard to courteously rubber-stamp us into the country, and soon we were walking through a portal in the 80-foot-high wall around the old city and onto a dazzling white marble boulevard dating to the 1300s, flanked by classic architecture and sculpture, as well as homes and shops, protected for ages by the mighty wall.

The wall, alas, was no match for modern aggressors. Walking on its broad top we came upon a maritime museum in which a display of photographs commemorated the shelling of the city in 1991 by the Yugoslav army. Forty-three civilians were killed and ancient buildings and cultural icons were damaged or destroyed in what a U.N. war crimes court described as “an attack against the cultural heritage of the whole of humankind.”

Dubrovnik has recovered from that modern-day barbarism, and today cheerfully exploits its old world identity with a thoroughly contemporary tourist industry. It’s a vibrant, fascinating place that I recommend as the ideal starting point for a Croatian bareboat cruise. The cruising grounds start a scant 20 miles away with the lovely island of Mljet.

As we entered Mljet’s Polace inlet, our skipper remarked that it reminded him of Lake Huron’s North Channel. If a Norwegian had been aboard, he might have said it reminded him of home. For we were in a fjord. We anchored in the embrace of its forested walls.

In the morning we hiked a rocky trail to a windswept ridge and found the view we sought—of Mljet’s two saltwater lakes far below and the 12th century Benedictine monastery that sits in solitary splendor on an island in one of them. In the distance, gray waves and whitecaps on the Adriatic signaled an approaching low-pressure system.

It wasn’t long before we were surfing on those waves as they steepened in the narrow passage between the islands of Peljesac and Korcula, our next destination. With the wind piping at 25 knots and graphite clouds rolling so low it seemed they would touch the waves, we eschewed the marina on the windward side of the peninsular city of Korcula, and found a quiet berth at a public landing in the lee of the medieval wall that surrounds the town.

A word of advice here for would-be charterers: Go light on provisioning. Like the tavernas of Greece, small restaurants offering good food, albeit often in humble surroundings, abound in Croatia. Don’t miss them.

They certainly abound in Korcula, but on the night we were there, with the tourists long gone and the town battened down in a rainstorm of Biblical proportions, we tramped through rivulets in the marble-paved alleyways to find a restaurant open for business, and were finally rewarded with a cozy refuge called the Marco Polo after Korcula’s most famous former resident. It featured two tables and one young woman to serve them and do everything else. She had no trouble turning out tasty dinners for the six of us while keeping the good local red wine flowing.

Croatia has soil and weather well suited for wine, and good bottles are available at just about every restaurant and market, but I wouldn’t call it the national drink. That would have to be coffee, judging from the abundance of coffee shops. They’re everywhere. On our stop at the island of Hvar, most of the island’s small population seemed to be occupied in the pursuit of chatting, smoking and drinking coffee at shops whose outside tables—occupied morning to night even in mid-autumn—offered prime views of the postcard-pretty harbor.

Our cruise was short but packed with discovery, sort of like a well-made espresso—a serving that was small but had bracing effect. We experienced a lot in less than a week in Croatian waters. One reason for that was the fact we were traveling in a fast motoryacht, a sacrifice I made to get a quick overview for this report.

Incidentally, I found a copy of the Croatian Playboy at a newsstand, but I didn’t buy it. The words were all in Croatian, and I couldn’t read the articles.