Island hopping in Croatia which are the best ones!

Finding the right boat type

Not sailing on a big boat filled with unknown people with in advance arranged route, but renting a sailing boat or a motorboat together with your friends. To sail completely free without any limitations, planning your route from one day to another, anchoring in small sandy coves or sailing with the sunset. Yes, definitely that would be a perfect vacation! In continuation we will try to explain how easily you can arrange that.

Before everything you have to decide if you want to rent a sailing boat or a motorboat. With a sailing boat the “ride” will be much more peaceful and you will be able to enjoy your sailing to the fullest, while if you rent a motorboat you will be much more movable, and go much faster from one destination to another.

When talking about sailing boats, some of the most famous manufacturers are Bavaria Yachtbau, Dufour, Jeanneau, Hanse, Benneteau and their famous brands like Sun Odyssey, Bavaria Cruiser, Oceanis, First and others. On the other hand some of the most famous motorboats manufacturers are Bavaria Yachtbau, Azimut Yacht, Sunseeker, Benetti, Sea Ray, Fairline, Ferretti Group.

Perfect destination

Not sailing on a big boat filled with unknown people with in advance arranged route, but renting a sailing boat or a motorboat together with your friends. To sail completely free without any limitations, planning your route from one day to another, anchoring in small sandy coves or sailing with the sunset. Yes, definitely that would be a perfect vacation! In continuation we will try to explain how easily you can arrange that.

Before everything you have to decide if you want to rent a sailing boat or a motorboat. With a sailing boat the “ride” will be much more peaceful and you will be able to enjoy your sailing to the fullest, while if you rent a motorboat you will be much more movable, and go much faster from one destination to another.

When talking about sailing boats, some of the most famous manufacturers are Bavaria Yachtbau, Dufour, Jeanneau, Hanse, Benneteau and their famous brands like Sun Odyssey, Bavaria Cruiser, Oceanis, First and others. On the other hand some of the most famous motorboats manufacturers are Bavaria Yachtbau, Azimut Yacht, Sunseeker, Benetti, Sea Ray, Fairline, Ferretti Group.

Finding the right boat

Now we can finally search for a perfect boat. Sailboat is our decision, and seven of us friends defined a budget suitable for every one of us. Our trip is planned for the first week in July, because we want to avoid crowds in the middle of the season.

Let’s say that our budget is 650 € per person which in total is 4.550 € for seven of us.

We sit on our computer, search for A2A-Yachting.agency and in five minutes you have booked your perfect sailboat. More detailed search through the A2A-Yachting.agency search engine will be described in one of our next blogs.

One out of seven of us is a skipper amateur and knows basics of sailing, but is not very certain in his knowledge, and wants to enjoy his vacation, not to think about anchoring, or about the weather, just enjoy to the fullest. Long story short we have to find a skipper. Hmm… We haven’t found a boat, and already we have to find a skipper. This process of finding a skipper will be described in our next blog because it is connected with the search of boats through A2A-Yachting.agency search engine.

Skippers daily wage is on average 150 € a day + boat cabin and the food. By summing al that, for a week the skipper coasts 1050 € + food. The food for the skipper does not represent a significant cost because he eats together with the crew so for now we can ignore the food expense for him. For the skipper it is important to provide a separate cabin or at least separate bed (in the case where cabins have bunk beds). It is actually pretty important to have number of cabins and beds on the boat while choosing one.

For you it doesn’t mean a thing when we say the boat has 45 ft. (size of the boat is measured in feet), but if we say the boat has 4 cabins or 8 beds it is much easier to visualize the size of the boat.

Somehow there is always this question about how much fuel do these boats spend, how much do Marinas and the anchoring (buoy) cost? We have to emphasize that sailboats really don’t spend that much fuel. On average we are talking about 3 liters per hour for a smaller sailboat up to 8 liters per hour for a bigger one.

Normal usage of the engine as a propulsion is around 25 – 30 h in a week of cruise. Using simple math calculation it is easy to conclude that on fuel we spend from 100 € up to 300 €. On the other hand calculation for motor boats is not that simple, and often fuel consumption goes up to 1 000 € and more.

When talking about Marinas, berths and anchoring, the situation is slightly different. Croatia has always been recognized as a one of the destinations with a big network of Marinas on the Adriatic Coast. One of the leading ones are ACI Marinas, and afterwards we have D-Marine, Marina Kaštela, Marina Baotić, Marina Kornati and many others

Of course the service provided by the Marinas is defined with the price list from the Marina itself, and it usually depends on the size of the boat, and the in which faze of season you are coming. In one week of anchoring we are using a combination of anchoring, tying on the buoys, and tying in the marinas.

On average in a week this expense is from 200 € up to 500 €

Ok… so now our budget is not 4550 € because we have to reduce it for 1050 € to pay the skipper and now we have 3500 €. The expenses for the fuel and Marinas are variable and depend on the requests and ideas of the crew, in that way we cannot put them in the same budget intended for the boat.

After all this you are probably wondering if is possible to find a boat for that amount of money, and the answer is - Of course it is possible!!!

Below we have listed the boats for our price range.

In one of our next blogs we will describe a search through the A2A-Yachting.agency search engine, how to find a perfect boat and a perfect skipper, what to take with you on a cruise, what to have on mind during check in and many other themes.

Sail away from safe harbor. Catch the wind in yout sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.