Croatia With Med Sailors

Ok so as I write this, it is taking quite literally ALL my motivation and sensibility to not start quoting Lonely Island. Because.. I (WAS) ON A BOAT!! Well. Yacht. Yacht trip. Similar principal though.

So. To set the scene, planning for the trip took a long ass time. My blogger friend Emily (aka Style Lobster) floated the idea of a yacht trip up the Dalmatian Coast in Croatia circa six months ago, on a particularly rainy and crappy Wednesday afternoon. We were sitting in the Debenhams press office making origami flowers (I forget the exact reason why), and I had basically never heard of a more sensible suggestion. Croatia? Yas. Yacht? Yaaas. I’m in fam – talk to me about flights.

So we had a solid half year to get excited about the trip. Although obviously none of us packed until the night before the flight. Because life. In fact, I’ll be blogging later this week about how to pack for a yacht trip – turns out it is a very niche problem, and not one that ANY of us truly nailed. But you can learn from our (my) mistakes.

We chose the Med Sailors Voyager option, which is a trip from Dubrovnik to Split (or vice versa), with stops each day at various islands. TBH, this came as something of a shock. I wasn’t overly au fait with Croatia and didn’t realise it wasn’t all attached to the mainland. Learn something new every day…

We got the crazy early BA flight out of Gatwick (less crazy early post-three hour delay, but we won’t dwell on that..) and arrived at Dubrovnik airport around 1pm. The port was about a 45minute drive (taxis are cheap and readily avaialable – ours was 300 kuna for the four of us including luggage, which works out around £7 per person), and we were deposited outside the entrance to the marina. Which is a good point, actually – you really need a squishy bag for yacht-life since there’s so little space, but you also really need wheels. Because you tend to do some serious miles (slash, metres) getting to and from your boat. Natalie and Kat learnt this the hard way..) We were met by the guest relations manager, Teresa, and told we would be met by our skipper, Sven. As he strode towards us all floppy hair and tanned, I made the immediate assumption: Sven from Sweden! I was actually wrong, but it was a title that stuck.

The Med Sailors package includes breakfast and lunches, so we pottered off the the shop to stock up on snacks and drinks. We’d had grand plans of making margaritas on board, but couldn’t figure out Croatian for Tripple Sec, so settled on G&T.

S H O P  T H E  L O O K

We met the other four guests on our boat, settled into our rooms and set sail. Which was THE best feeling in the world, btw. We were on a Catamaran, which is like a double pronged boat with netting at the front so you can sunbathe :). I mean, I’m pretty sure it serves some other important purpose, but that’s what we used it for.

Whilst on Med Sailor, you are part of a flotilla of five boats. There’s a range of each type of boat in each flotilla, and naturally I think ours was the best. You see each other occasionally at sea, which is always exciting. And we always docked into harbour / at anchor together. On the first night, we did the whole ice breaker thing: punch. Lots. Of. And then we all discovered what waking up on a boat with a raging hangover is like…

There is literally SO much I want to tell you about Med Sailors in Croatia, so I’m going to split the posts into themes. Next up: what to pack for Yacht Life.

Olivia x