Take a Tall Ship to See Croatia

by Cruising Editor/Ginny McGrath on 8 Aug 2007 Want to sail Croatia, but don't want to sail yourself? - Here's a solution which could prove to be a great sailing holiday. Ginny McGrath went on the first charter of tall ship Rhea recently, and found her 'snappy dress sense' eclipsed by the beauty of Rhea

'I had my photo taken regularly in Montenegro and Croatia – by locals, by tourists, even by policemen, and while I’d like to say it was my snappy dress sense that attracted them, I can’t take the credit. It was Rhea they wanted – her tall frame and smooth curves turned heads in every port.

She eclipsed every fibreglass yacht and shiny gin palace we moored next to, and even outshone the helicopter-topped super yacht owned by Roman Abramovich, which we inadvertently tailed around the Dalmatian Coast; but more on him later.

Rhea attracts the crowds for her unusual looks – a vast Baltic trader built in 1900 and constructed of pine, teak and oak, she has a topsail schooner rig (square sails) and two masts – she’s every inch the pirate ship.

It had been ten years since I’d been on Rhea – my family have great affection for her after years of sailing holidays in Greece and Turkey, so we couldn’t turn down the offer to be her first charter in the Balkans.

Owners David and Penny Ross have lived and sailed in Turkey for 20 years, but brought Rhea to the Balkans this summer because competition among wooden sailing boats is now so fierce. Gulet sailing holidays are two to the dozen in Turkey and the boats are inexpensively produced on a wide scale, which has driven down the cost of sailing holidays and eroded Rhea’s custom.

Being onboard felt wonderfully familiar, as places do when you return again and again – the pine smell mixed with sea salt and the creak of the oak beams as she rolls over the waves. One thing I hadn't remembered though after years of villa holidays, was the dimensions of sail boat living. People accustomed to sailing will know that travelling light and unpacking neatly into cubby-holes is the only way to avoid cluttered cabin fever – the phrase ship-shape has never been more apposite.

That said, you spend little time below-deck. Meals are in the shade of an awning on deck and of the eight family and friends in our party, half of us slept on deck most nights under vast inky skies smattered with twinkling stars. It’s a great feeling waking with the sun warming your body, and open your eyes to the sparkling Adriatic, even if it is 7am.

We began our trip at Kotor in Montenegro, a medieval town with narrow cobbled streets and wide defensive walls that you enter like a secret garden through a small stone arch. The town’s terracotta-tiled roofs are overlooked by the San Giovanni fort and chapel, which have origins in the 9th century. To reach them is a heart-pounding 90-minute walk up steps that wend between cypress trees on the steep slope above the city.

Kotor has a fruit and vegetable market on the quay, where jewellery is sold at night, lively nightlife that attracts hoards of glamorously-dressed young Montenegrins, and restaurants that spill onto cobbled squares and bougainvillea-draped terraces.

After Kotor we sailed into Kotor Bay, a steep-sided 16-mile fjord that spills into the Adriatic Sea. We passed two diminutive islands, Gospaod Skrpjela and Sveti Dorde, topped a 17th century church and a tiny museum and monastery respectively, which you can tour with the resident nun for a small fee. We sailed on to cross the border into Croatia at Herceg Novi, which required a not insubstantial effort from skipper David, and the presentation of two Rhea crew t-shirts for the officials.

Our initial plan was to sail to Hvar and Vis, two of the larger islands north of Dubronik, but we found so many beautiful bays and ports along the way that we didn’t make it further north than the island of Korcula. Here the walled old town has a fishbone layout that keeps the streets shaded and cooled by a sea breeze, and the main attraction is the house alleged to be the birthplace of Marco Polo. We had a memorable sun-downer cocktail at Tramonto Cocktail Bar and ate at the restaurant of the same name next door – it was another enjoyable evening where the affable waiters and sunset views made up for the odd disappointing dish.

On the point of restaurants, it is easy to summarise Dalmatian Coast cuisine – every menu we encountered had similar options: grilled meat (the lamb kofta kebab was excellent), grilled fish (scampi usually means crayfish), and various salads, fish soups, and often pasta and pizza, denoting the Italian influence.

Prices tended to be lower in Montenegro (£6-£15 a head for two courses with wine), than Croatia (£10-£30 a head), and wine was pricey relative to the food in both countries, topping £8 a bottle. Our experience of local wine was mixed, although we had our greatest luck with a white wine called Posip (bottles that cost less than £5 are not a bargain, and best avoided) and a red called Plavac.

The daily agenda aboard Rhea slips nicely into the routine of a morning sail to find a quiet bay for lunch, swimming, snorkelling (although there’s not a lot of marine life to see), canoeing, waterskiing and wakeboarding, plus occasional forays onto dry land, then an afternoon sail to port. Here, the enduringly fiddly task of finding a mooring space, then slotting into it, bring evening entertainment for all onboard and the crowd that invariably gathers on the quay.

Imagine driving a Bentley into a car park coated in black ice where the only available space is between two Jaguars; and you don’t have power steering. Modern yachts often have bow and stern thrusters to propel the boat sideways to counter wind or straighten up for a mooring, but Rhea has none. It’s only David’s intimate understanding of how she operates, even in a side wind, that gets you into harbour.

Once docked Penny serves anchoring drams. She's a cordial hostess who can produce a cup of tea, a bacon buttie and even a lunch of lamb and salad pittas in rough weather. It is only the smells wafting through the galley hatch that alert those lounging on deck that another tasty lunch is being prepared.

There’s a lot of lounging; I’m not sure whether it’s the loll of the sea, or the utter surrender to holiday slovenliness, but once onboard people snooze in the day, but have no problems getting a full night's sleep. You don’t have to be lazy – although David and Penny have two crew members who’ll take care of the rope pulling, they’re happy for you to join in.

Our charter’s crew included daughter Julia, whose patient waterskiing instruction was welcome, and Ramazan, a Turkish bodybuilder-type and rope-puller extraordinaire. There are no motorised winches on Rhea, so the sails are hoisted the good old-fashioned way, and it was a thrill on our penultimate day to be sailing into Montenegro all sails up and the boat purring at eight knots.

Interrupting the tranquillity, Rhea did not let us down with moments of adventure. Unravelling our anchor from an unmarked fishing net as the wind slowly blew us towards the rocks, gave us an anxious half hour. Then there was the time we returned from a boozy supper to find Ramazan ready to up-anchor as we’d drifted toward a sleek racing yacht that turned out to have smashed a transatlantic sailing record and be worth a small fortune. Its crew were waving and shouting for us to move, which meant dodging moored boats in the darkness. It didn’t phase Rhea's crew, but it got us landlubbers excited.

More indulgent highlights included eating lobster at Sponga (tel. 0091 588 3948; lobster costs £55/kg), a restaurant at Polace on the island of Mljet, where the owner swore he had been visited by Abramovich the night before. We’d first seen Abramovich’s boat in Dubrovnik, and had tailed him to Mljet, where we were su