Nautical Tourism News

Recently published statistics for 2007 confirm that nautical tourism is on the up in Croatia.

The total number of moorings available was 15,834 and although it's no surpise that Austria and Germany were the biggest international permanent "occupiers" of Croatian berths, USA flagged vessels were an astounding third with Slovenia, Italy and the UK (323) following.

There were 220,875 vessels in transit during the year with Italy, as usual, providing the highest number of foreign visitors, followed by Germany, Austria and Slovenia.

Today's photo is of the classic, Croatian built yacht Galatea. More details from http://www.ocean-matters.com/.

You can read more about the nautical tourism infrastructuire in our Croatia Cruising Companion. Go to our Home Page for more information.

Split Boat Show And Other News

Today was the last day of the Croatia Boat Show in Split. Other committments have meant that we haven't had the time to report on it as fully as we might like, and the weather has not been kind to the organisers this year. That being said, we did pay a number of visits and talk to a few exhibitors and visitors. Anecdotal evidence suggests that attendance might have been down this year and certainly there were a few more unfilled spaces exhibitor wise. The entrance fee of 70 kunas probably has something to do with that - yes boat shows are for serious punters but why not make them family friendly as well? On that note we also heard that Sunseeker were actively discouraging anyone who was not a serious buyer from looking around their yachts. Just how that decision is made is a conundrum in itself and, in any event, today's ten year old might be tomorrow's Bill Gates. On the plus side, the show included the first Croatia Property Show and hopefully that will grow in the future. It was also highly refreshing to see Vicem's classy 92 and 72 high on the list of "must sees" for discerning visitors. Link to http://www.vicemyacht.com/ for more information.

For more news on the boat show go to http://www.croatiaboatshow.com/. It's good to see a list of events, in English, on the site this year - in previous years finding out "what's on" has been a bit of a struggle.

Other News:

Our Croatia Cruising Companion continues to hold its own on Amazon maintaining its position in the top ten of all travel and holiday books on Croatia, and the top twenty for sailing books anywhere. Go to our home page for more information.

Our sister site, http://www.croatiaonline.blogspot.com/ is thriving on healthy competition from our Australian/Croatian friends Shane and Julie on the rare times we get to meet up with them at the same event. That happened today at an equally rare cricket match and we had a race to get the posting up, which I'm glad to say Croatia Online won! Joking aside, they have a great blog (http://www.blog.lifejacketadventures.com/) and , if you read it, you'll wonder how they have time to keep it going. In their spare time (!) they're renovating a property and an old wooden boat. For business they run kayaking tours in Croatia, a laundrette in Split, and much more besides. Their two young children seem to thrive too!