Crossing over to Croatia

Piran looked a pretty place. We stuck our nose into the harbour and it looked pretty busy. After several days of slowing down, busy wasn’t really high on the agenda. So we changed plans and decided that crossing over to Croatia was the thing to do.

Everyone’s told us that the Croatians are sticklers for the rules. Being an EU candidate country, they want to do everything by the book. So one rule is that you have to check into the nearest port of entry. Umag was that for us. Only being 6M away, it wasn’t really a stretch. We didn’t even rearrange the fenders between Piran and Umag.

As we crossed the watery border painted with invisible ink a Slovenian police boat went off and a Croatian police boat hovered motoring just in front of us. It was at that point I realized it would be good protocol to change courtesy flags. Probably just a coincidence, but just after I did that the Croatian police boat dropped back, in what appeared to be satisfaction.

I’d forgotten to get a Q-flag, and as we were officially leaving the EU for the first time I wasn’t sure what to expect. So Bianca suggested using a dish cloth, which was genius, and worked a treat.

Checking in was painless. Except for the price. We’d been forewarned that all the costs had gone up this year, so we were prepared for it. Most of the time we live pretty frugally and would rather give our money out on doing things. Croatia has been on the bucket-list for a while. So it was a no brainer. We bit the bullet and forked over for a three month ticket, moved the boat into the middle of the harbour, picked up a mooring buoy. Croatia – baby!

Sweltering in what’s supposed to be a heat wave here at the moment, we all climbed into the dink. I rowed us into town, hoping that we could find a chandlers to fix the fuel connector (not to be, and tomorrow is a public holiday – so more rowing) and legged it to the nearest supermarket 15 minutes away.

My first impression of the place is that they’ve really got their shit together. Everyone we met spoke REALLY good English (and probably 3 other languages too). Got new data cards for the phone in less than 3 minutes. AND there are several kids playgrounds close by. So it looks like we will be staying a few days.

Max