Yacht charter Dubrovnik

The city, and why it is not the week

Dubrovnik’s Old Town is genuinely magnificent and it receives a volume of visitors that has made it, in high season, one of the least pleasant places on the Adriatic to spend an afternoon. Several cruise ships can discharge into a walled city of a few narrow streets on the same morning.

The walls are worth walking and the city is worth two or three hours. Do it at eight in the morning, before the ships disembark, or at seven in the evening after they have sailed. Between those hours in July and August the Stradun is a queue.

The other structural point is that yachts do not berth in the Old Town. There is no marina there. The charter base is ACI Komolac, several miles up the Ombla inlet — a pleasant, sheltered river berth surrounded by green hills, and about twenty minutes by road from the city. Some guests find that a disappointment; most decide it is an improvement.

The Elafiti and Mljet

These two are the actual product and they are twenty minutes and two hours from the base respectively.

The Elafiti

A small archipelago immediately north-west of Dubrovnik. Šipan, Lopud and Koločep are inhabited, largely car-free, and startlingly quiet given that they are within sight of one of the busiest tourist destinations in Europe. Lopud has a genuine sand beach at Šunj, which is rarer in Croatia than visitors expect. Šipan has two villages, a handful of restaurants and almost nothing else.

Mljet

Two hours west and the best single day on this coast. The western third of the island is a national park containing two connected saltwater lakes, joined to the sea by a narrow channel, with a twelfth-century monastery on an islet in the larger one. You can swim across, cycle round, or take the park boat. The island is heavily wooded, sparsely inhabited and completely unlike the bare karst of the northern Adriatic.

Park fees apply per person and the yacht pays a mooring fee inside the park at Pomena or Polače. Both are worth it and both should be in the budget.

The crossing to Kotor

This is the extension that distinguishes a Dubrovnik charter from a Split one, and on a week with settled weather it is the best thing you can do with the days.

The Bay of Kotor is thirty-odd miles south, across an international border. It is a deep, steep-sided, twisting inlet — not geologically a fjord, though it looks like one — with mountains rising directly from the water and medieval towns at Perast and Kotor at the head of it. The scale of it is genuinely startling from a yacht.

The crossing requires clearance out of Croatia and into Montenegro, and back again. This means a stop at a port of entry at each end, agents, and a few hours in total. The yacht must hold the correct documentation and not all charter vessels do, so it must be agreed before booking rather than proposed aboard.

On seven nights this is a stretch but a worthwhile one, and it usually replaces Mljet rather than joining it. On ten nights you can have both comfortably, which is the strongest argument we know for extending a Croatian charter beyond a week.

One-way to Split

The most under-used option on this coast. Rather than sailing out from Dubrovnik and back, take the yacht one way to Split — or the reverse — and fly home from the other end.

The advantage is that a hundred miles of coastline stops being a there-and-back constraint and becomes a route. Dubrovnik, the Elafiti, Mljet, Korčula, Hvar, Brač and Split in seven nights is a genuinely coherent week with no repetition, and it takes in almost everything southern and central Dalmatia has.

Operators charge a repositioning fee for this, because the boat has to get back for the next charter. It is usually modest relative to what it buys, and it is always worth asking the price before assuming a round trip. Both airports have good European connections.

What it costs

Slightly above Split for equivalent tonnage, because the fleet here is smaller and the base less competitive. The Croatian regime is the same — electronic crew list, vessel permit, tourist tax per person per night, and national park fees at Mljet.

Budget separately for the Montenegro clearance if it is in the plan: agents’ fees, harbour dues and a cruising permit at the Montenegrin end. It is not expensive but it is not nil, and it should be quoted rather than absorbed.

Weather on the southern coast

Southern Dalmatia is more exposed than the sheltered channels around Split, and the two Adriatic winds behave differently here.

The maestral is the same helpful afternoon north-westerly, arriving a little stronger on this stretch because there is more open water to the west. It makes for good afternoon sailing between the Elafiti and Mljet and dies away in the evening.

The jugo matters more here than the bura does. It is a warm, humid south-easterly that builds slowly, brings cloud and rain, and raises a genuine sea over the long fetch up the Adriatic. It can persist for several days. The bura is violent but usually brief; the jugo is the wind that rearranges half a week.

The consequence is that the south-facing anchorages — including several of the best on Mljet and the Elafiti — become untenable in a jugo while the northern sides of the same islands stay comfortable. A skipper who works this coast is already carrying the alternative, which is the strongest argument for taking one.

The Montenegro crossing is the leg most affected: thirty-odd miles of open water in a building jugo is an unpleasant morning, and it is the commonest reason a planned Kotor extension is dropped. Plan it early in the week while the forecast allows rather than saving it for Friday.

Questions