It seems Croatia may be trying to send cruisers a message – “If you come bring your wallet”.

On our way to Croatia, we cleared out of Greece and sailed to an island just north of Corfu for the jump off the next day to Croatia. That day we heard from other cruisers on the SSB net there, that they have just instituted a new tax for cruisers. This was some sort of tax hotel guests pay and someone realized boaters were not paying it, so now that is added to all check-ins.

This is in addition to the already expensive Cruising Permit. For us the cruising permit would be about $300 US for a month and the new tax would add about $140 US for one month.

In addition, we got an email from friends that informed us costs for Kornati National Park are $60 to over $100/ day depending on boat size. The other national park is about $10 per person per day.

And more and more places are now charging for anchoring at rates up to 50 Euro per night. In many of these anchorages, there is no posted notice and they come around just before sunset when it is too late to move.

Onboard Ventana we figured to cruise in Croatia for 1 month would end up costing us about $1,000 – this is for no services – in other words, things that are free or very low cost in most of the over 55 countries we have cruised.

We decided Croatia was sending us a message. We heeded the message and instead set off the next day for Italy.

We are loving it here!

Arrivederci,

Rob Dubin

SY Ventana

www.ventanasvoyage.com