The Rise and Rise of Croatia for Sailing
Holidays
by: Christopher Longmore
In the 1980s, Croatia - then part of Yugoslavia - built up a sizeable
yacht charter industry. It was never then on the scale to rival long
time favourite Greece, but it was large enough to get itself noticed
as an attractive coming destination. Then came the various Balkan wars
- one of them involving Croatia itself - and the disintegration of old
Yugoslavia. Croatia is now the ex-Yugoslav republic with almost all
the coast line!
Since the wars ended the growth of the croatian yacht charter (see
http://www.gyc-croatia.com)
industry has been little short of astonishing. In an industry notoriously
short of credible statistics, we suspect that Croatia must now be a
serious rival to Greece. There are a number of expalanations for this
remarkable success:
The country is naturally blessed with sailing waters as good and varied
as anywhere in the world.
After the war, the Croatian government went out of its way to encourage
and indeed subsidise the re-building and building of the necessary infrastructure
- most obviously the marinas.
Northern Croatia is a 4 hour drive from most of Austria, and southern
parts of Germany. Even Dalmatia, where perhaps the best sailing is to
be found - is only 6 hours away. This was always a big advantage, but
in the wake of 9/11, when Germans in particular were reluctant to climb
on an airplane, it catapulted the industry forward.
Sailing holidays in Croatia (see http://www.allafloat.com) now include
almost everything that customers could conceivably want. There are thousands
of bareboat yachts to charter (see http://www.global-yacht.com) in bases
from Pula and Cres in Istria, to the massive yachting centres of Zadar,
Sukosan, Sibenik, Murter Island, Split, & Dubrovnik. Each one of
those can be chartered with a skipper for those without the necessary
experience. There are sailing flotillas from Split, and an RYA Authorised
Sailing School on Murter Island. The opportunities to spend one week
afloat and another ashore are endless.
One of the problems for the British used to be that getting there was
expensive and there were not enough seats on such planes flew there.
Things started to improve in 2004, with regular charter flights to Split
at least. For 2005, there are flights to Opatija in the north, Zadar
to get to central Dalmatia, Split, and also Dubrovnik. Getting to Istria
is easy. Just fly EasyJet to Venice, or Ryanair to Trieste. The first
has hydrofoil links to the excellent sailing of Pula; the second is
a transfer bus away from Portoroz (actually in Slovenia), and Pula.
Croatia is now the sailing destination for the British - the destination
that has it all!
About The Author - Christopher LONGMORE - Owner of Top
Notch, a GibSea402 based in Turkey and of the Global Yacht sailing holiday
group (http://www.global-yacht-holidays.com).
- cbl@global-yacht.com
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