Croatia, friends, dolphins, and yoga?

It was time to return to Croatia and collect our dear friends from California, Howard and Mel. In order to do so, we were in four ports in one day:

Izola – where we were leaving

Piran – where we had to visit the police station to check out of Slovenia (easy)

Umag – in northern Croatia where we had to visit the police station to check in to Croatia (not as easy, but not bad)

Rovinj – where we were to meet friends (yay!)

Conor had heard stories about border control into Croatia, so was much relieved when we completed this step. Oddly, it was the first time I had been called off the boat to appear in person in the police station. The police officer was quite grumpy and had just finished telling off the skipper who checked in before us. Thankfully, Conor has a way with people and we received a “No problem” by the time we were done.

If you may recall from our previous visit to Rovinj, it has a beautiful marina with fancy facilities. Conor and I enjoyed a beautiful swim and a delicious dinner at Maestral, right on the water, before we collected Howard and Mel that night fresh off their ferry from Venice. This was the perfect place to start their week with us.

So what happens in Croatia during a week with dear friends? We:

• introduce them to cool places we like (Rovinj, Pula, Lošinj, Zadar, Trogir and Split)
• discover a couple new places (Otok Žirje – a fun anchorage site; marina in Trogir)
• enjoy beautiful swims
• have fun and some laughs trying out the SUP
• enjoy a couple of peaceful overnight anchorages
• start tracking super yachts that show up in our anchorages
• give UberDing some exercise
• eat really well because Mel can find awesome restaurants
• enjoy lots of happy hours on the boat
• spot dolphins a couple of times
• discover Mel gets seasick (but not badly because Dramamine is a wonder)
• do boat yoga!

I would tend to take Howard and Mel into whatever town we had landed in to show them around while Conor had work meetings every day. Then we’d meet up for dinner when he was finished. We also had to spend most days motoring down to the next location as we needed to cover a lot of ground to reach the Split airport in one week. We probably covered nearly 200 nautical miles and did mostly motor sailing. (If you ever want to fly into the Split airport, know that it’s way closer to Trogir than to Split.) 😉 

(Thanks to Howard for many of the photos!)

Have I mentioned before that Howard and Mel are actually the reason we are on this adventure to begin with?! It was literally a year ago to the day that we arrived in Washington state to board their beautiful boat and cruise around the San Juan islands. We had such a great time. Because I did, it got Conor thinking that we could do this too… Needless to say, the guys enjoyed talking a lot of boat shop.

It was so great to share a similar experience but around the world in a different place, climate, and type of boat. It also felt like we had a piece of home visiting us. 🙂 Sad to see them leave, but we hope they’ll be back!