From Trogir we sailed through the mostly uninhabited Kornati Islands visiting Kakan, Zut, and Iz on our way back to Zadar. The weather was mixed but we did manage to play with the blister for a few hours and keep the engine hours to a minimum. The water is warming by mid-June (23 degrees C) and swimming off the back of the boat and sunbathing au naturel is common in Crotia. Croatia is crazy about soccer and, in addition to eliminating England in the preliminary rounds to Euro 2008, they now are top of their pool. HD big screen tv's are [View Full Entry]

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Our foul weather gear came in handy on Friday when we sailed from Vis to Brac with 15-25 knt winds being generated by swirling thunderheads and the associated rainstorms. Brac is the source of fine white limestone used by the Romans to build Diocletian's palace in Split and can be found in the White House. We stayed in the little port of Pucisca next to the limestone quarry which still produces high quality stone and is the home of a school for stone-masons. There are some interesting limestone structures including intricate streetlamps. Over the weekend the storms have dissipated and the [View Full Entry]

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On Sunday June 1st after a couple of nights in Dubrovnik and with our new crew aboard, we started our sail northwest back to Zadar. The winds which has been consistently SE for the past 2 weeks also had a change of direction to northwesterlies. Sailing for another two weeks with the wind on the bow seemed our monotonous fate, however today the wind resumed its southeasterly flow and we employed our blister for the first time to good effect passing all the Austrians who had non. The blister, the equivalent of a cruising spinnaker that attaches to the forestay, is [View Full Entry]

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We arrived mid-afternoon in the Dubrovnik Marina after a pleasant close-hauled sail against 10-15 knt winds and a brief picture-taking stop outside the harbour of the old town. The ACI marina is 2 miles up the river Dubrovacka in the grounds of an old mansion with formal gardens and ponds. The marinas in Croatia have some of the best facilities we have used and since we were here last, two years ago, ACI have added new washrooms and showers at the end of the Ecker dock. Ecker yachting have an office here so we are able to clean the boat and [View Full Entry]

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We have experienced a full range of sailing conditions with wind mainly from the SE, our intended direction of travel, making headway slow. Our skipper has whipped his crew into shape so we tack smoothly and keep lines neat and sails trimmed. Mediterranean docking stern-to-the-dock can be challenging with 25 knt cross-winds, but once safely tied to the dock it's a great source of entertainment watching the Austrians try to duplicate the same manouever. We coined the phrase "an Austrian moment" after watching a crew with 8 Austrian men completely botch their docking attempt; at one point scr [View Full Entry]

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Our 30 day rain-free streak was broken on Saturday as it started to spot as we stepped onto the boat in Zadar. Intermitent rain during the day turned to heavy rain overnight. The patter of rain on the deck invokes fond memories of vacations in England as a boy. Happy times. Our friends from Golden arrived on Saturday and will be crewing for the next two weeks. Zweigelt is a 38 foot Bavaria that we have chartered. In Europe a bare boat charter is exactly that. Bare boat. The rain-gear normally found on a North American charter boats is absent. On [View Full Entry]

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The physical scars of war are not evident as we stroll around the traffic-free marble streets of Zadar's old town. Zadar has changed hands many times since it was first settled by Illystrians in the 9th century BC and traces of successive inhabitants are to be found everywhere and displayed with pride. One would never suspect that 60% of its buildings were destroyed by allied bombing in WWII and that Zadar was under siege by the Serbs after the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1993. The economic scars of war that you might expect are also conspicuously absent. On the contrary, many [View Full Entry]

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We left Zagreb on the 06:50 train and thought we would miss our connection to Zadar because we arrived at Knin 25 minutes late, however the train was waiting for us and so we arrived in Zadar as planned in the early afternoon. The trains took us through green, hilly countryside and past little stations in the middle of nowhere that have not yet been repaired from Croatia's most recent war. The temperatures in Croatia are unseasonably warm and feel very pleasant to us after Egypt. The picture shows some excavations by the five wells in the old town of Zadar. [View Full Entry]

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Construction of Trakoscan Castle commenced in the 12th century and it was enlarged and/or rennovated almost continuously over the following centuries. The castle is now maintained by the state and houses an exhibit of original peices of furniture from the Draskovics family who lived there for over 400 years from the 16th century. Situated beside a large lake amongst forested rolling hills, it must have been heart-breaking to walk way from just before the outbreak of WWII. After visiting Trakoscan castle in the morning we drove on to complete the tour and visited the castle at Varazdin which [View Full Entry]

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After 5 minutes driving northwest of Zagreb, we entered lush green rolling hills spotted with red-tiled houses and hilltop churches. Our first stop, Veliki Tabor castle is a recently restored 16th century castle perched on top of a hill; built as part mansion and part fortress. We ate lunch at Gresna Gerica, an incredibly pisturesque spot where chickens and ginea fowl pecked and scratched around the grapevines and heavily laden bees zoomed back to their hives. We sampled a glass of the excellent home-made wine with our bowls of mushroom soup. After another hour drive along country lanes [View Full Entry]

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