With its stunning coastline, gentle summer breezes, and historic ports, the Adriatic Sea continues to attract cruising yachts from all over the Mediterranean.
The Adriatic, the stretch of sea to the east of Italy, is an area that has long been popular with cruising yachts. With Italy on one side, and Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Montenegro, and Albania, on the other side, the Adriatic offers charterers a pleasant climate, crystal clear seas, spectacular coastlines, and fascinating historic ports.
Most charters take place along the coasts of Croatia and Slovenia, rather than the less picturesque East Coast of Italy, where the beaches are great but the coastline rather less interesting.
Indeed, the majority of boats kept along Italy’s east coast can be found cruising Croatian waters throughout the summer. There’s nothing wrong with Italy’s Adriatic coast, it’s just not as inviting as the cruising grounds opposite.
The Dalmatian coast of Croatia, however, is stunningly beautiful and ideal for leisurely island-hopping. The Dalmatian islands themselves are the tops of mountain ranges that were flooded back in prehistoric times, and which now enchant with their rugged coastlines and picture-postcard fishing villages. There is a timelessness about the Dalmatians which is hard to find anywhere else.
But perhaps the main attraction of the Adriatic are the beautiful cities dotted along its shores, and its picturesque islands, the stunning walled town of Piran in Slovenia, the extraordinary Roman ruins at Pula, the wild beauty of the Kornati Islands, and the historically interesting, as well as the aesthetically pleasing, towns of Hvar and Dubrovnik.
Since the civil wars of the 1990s there has been a lot of rebuilding and restoration along the Dalmatian coast, and these days the level of facilities on offer to visiting charterers has never been better.
Slovenian Tourist Board