Sailing Croatia: A Charter Planning Companion for the Adriatic's Five Cruising Grounds
Sailing Croatia is the third sailing title in our Travel Guides series, joining Sailing Greece and Sailing the Eastern Aegean. It is a plain-language planning companion for bareboat, flotilla, skippered and cabin charter sailors, and it is deliberately not a pilot book: it covers the layer a pilot isn't written to carry.
Which Ground, Which Crew
The book divides the coast into five cruising grounds: Istria and Kvarner; Zadar, the Kornati and Krka; Split, Trogir, Brač, Hvar and Vis; Makarska, Pelješac and Korčula; and Dubrovnik, the Elafiti islands and Mljet. For each, it says what a harbour is really like on a July afternoon and who the area suits.
The Adriatic's Three Winds
A large part of the book is about reading the maestral, the bora and the jugo, and why a harbour sheltered from one can be exposed to another. Four week-long itineraries (a first week, the Kornati, a Split-to-Dubrovnik one-way, and Kvarner) each have a weather lay-day built in.
The Practical Layer, Without Printed Prices
It explains how skipper qualifications and the ICC work, VHF certificates, national-park rules, the nautical tourist tax and berthing, buoys and anchoring. Fees and rules in Croatia change from season to season, so the book prints no prices: it explains how each mechanism works and where to check. Always confirm current requirements with your charter base before you travel.
Honest About Difficulty
The guide says plainly where the coast is forgiving, where it isn't, and where its own research runs thin. It is independent and unaffiliated with the RYA, the ASA, ACI or any charter company, and it should always be used alongside a current chart and pilot. At 140 pages, it is a book for the part of the trip before you cast off.
Sailing Croatia sits on the same shelf as Sailing Greece and Sailing the Eastern Aegean, and our dinghy and keelboat guides, Sailing To Succeed and Sail Further, are the skills books behind them.