May the 20th, 2022 - The classic sight of Dubrovnik super yachts which could be seen each and every summer in the Pearl of the Adriatic is severely lacking this year, with rich Russian yacht and villa owners avoiding Croatia entirely owing to sanctions. It seems Turkey is set to make the profit this year.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, a couple of years ago, there were no cruisers, but there were Dubrovnik super yachts that chose Croatia's southernmost city as their favourite destination, and spent up to half a million euros in Croatia in just three weeks. These were the absolute guests, especially last year when Croatia set a record in the number of yacht arrivals, so many that Dubrovnik has already been called the Croatian Monte Carlo, writes local portal Dubrovacki vjesnik.

However, this year no yacht owner has decided to go down to Dubrovnik, except for the one that was on a winter berth in the Port of Gruz. Whether the problem is the fact that the owners of luxury yachts are often Russians who will, understandably, avoid parts of Europe where they may have their property confiscated or something else, Dubrovacki vjesnik tried to find out from yacht managers.

Russian oligarchs have been left without their villas, yachts and money: "This war is a disaster for them"

"The reason for the absence of yacht owners is primarily the situation due to the war in Ukraine, and a large number of yacht owners across the Mediterranean have always been Russians. We don't expect them anywhere in the Mediterranean, not even in Croatia. Turkey will certainly benefit from this because many Russian-owned vessels are already in Turkey and so that country will definitely have a better season than us.

It's hard to predict how many there will be across the Mediterranean. So far, we're doing well, but I expect it will be a little less this season than the previous two pandemic-dominated summers. What the numbers will be, we'll see at the end of the season. This year there will also be fewer Americans because of the war in Europe,'' Dorijan Dujmic, the director of BWA Yachting Croatia.

Compared to 2021, there have been fewer private planes landing Dubrovnik Airport as well, and the reason is certainly the same - rich Russians are now bypassing Croatia, and Americans looking at a map of Europe still believe Croatia is too close to the ongoing conflict, as it seems only a few inches away from Ukraine on paper.

“Since the beginning of this year, about 247 business and general aviation flights (private flights) have been in operation at Dubrovnik Airport. Compared to last year during the same period, there was an increase in the number of aircraft operations (flights) of about 13.83 percent,'' said Ivan Maslac, the commercial director of Dubrovnik Airport.

Last year, a significant part of general and business aviation traffic was made up of larger privately owned aircraft (Bombardier Global Express, Gulfstream V, etc.), and Dubrovnik Airport expects a large number of general and business aviation traffic this year as well, which will more than likely be of the same profile. Of course, due to the sanctions imposed on Russia due to the war in Ukraine, we expect a smaller number of Russian passengers,'' he concluded.

For more, check out our travel section.

February the 3rd, 2022 - Croatian designer Marlena Dapcic is working on the designing of the most luxurious yacht ever to be constructed here in Croatia.

As Jutarnji/Novac writes, after graduating from the Faculty of Industrial Design in Venice, young designer Marlena Dapcic has already developed her career abroad working for other companies.

However, a few years ago, Marlena Dapcic decided to focus on her design studio and on Croatia, within her own company A.D. Group, with which she's carried out several notable projects and brought elements of ''real'' yachting into domestic shipbuilding practice. Yachts Croatia spoke to her in Split, where she is working on two new fifty-metre yacht projects and putting together some ideas for the future.

''My colleagues in Italy are famous designers and engineers, but nobody here knew me. At the beginning I was ''the one who chooses the colours'' and they called me in for interior design, although I started from an office where we did everything for smaller boats, and in the meantime I upgraded my knowledge, in Croatia we started all over again, from the beginning. In a few years, I managed to become recognisable, both as a designer and an engineer in one. The difference between a classic designer and my office is that we make a complete product. This way is quite similar to the mentality that the Croatian people have learned, that an engineer who has completed shipbuilding works on the design and everything else.

However, working in this way, the exterior design of existing projects hasn't progressed, so I started working on the interior and exterior design, with maximum effort to work with Croatian engineers who have a lot of experience, such as Vinko Strizic and Branko Vukovic. But they lack what I learned about design and materials in Italy,'' explained Marlena Dapcic.

''When I initially came to the shipyard with my construction plans, I wasn't accepted, partly due to the ignorance of the workers and my colleagues. It's paradoxical that at the same time, we have a profession which is done abroad for a lot more money, and they're much more valued over there, who wouldn't want that? Here in Croatia I have to constantly fight, which benefits me because I study, but it's very difficult to fight against the existing system, and the workers are older. I don't work as a classic designer, I had to give up that concept, but investors come to me and approach me as if a house is being built, not a ship, with all its requirements. Real designers often work for themselves and simply sell their concepts or work for a shipyard,'' added Marlena Dapcic.

''I was initially alone in A.D. Group, and since I only have two hands and one head, we had to increase the team, today there are four of us, there's my sister Helena who is an architect, one of my colleagues is an external collaborator and at the same time works for Fincantieri, and one of us is renderist who makes videos and renders,'' said Dapcic, who pointed out that it isn't a coincidence thay they're doing all this in Split, as two yachts are being ''born'' here under her supervision.

''On these two projects, we did the exterior and interior design, architectural plans and 3D renderings. The first yacht is ICY, and it's a new brand that will be heard about a lot more. The first yacht in the series is a fifty-metre mini cruiser, which should have the characteristics of a yacht, but it has fifteen cabins, and its own norms and rules of passenger ships, which are very strict. But the look will be at the level of yacht quality, unlike most existing ''winged'' mini cruisers. It can also be built as a yacht with six cabins, with an identical or similar external appearance.

On the other hand, the 46-metre yacht for which we're starting construction has a completely opposite logic. They opted for the concept of a real yacht with six cabins, but with masts and a slightly more classic look. We conceived it as a yacht ''from head to toe'', but with conservative and simple solutions in exterior design because we don't want to take risks with complicated shapes, but instead adapt to the construction possibilities that exist in steel and aluminum.

Marlena Dapcic added that it will be the most luxurious yacht built in the Republic of Croatia so far.

''It's characterised by clean exterior lines and a wave motif that is repeated both on the outside and on the inside, as two units which are connected by design. Inside, we used onyx with backlighting and lots of innovative materials, with the presence of proven materials like alcantara and fabrics that give the yacht a feeling of warmth, a ''clean'' design with white surfaces and gold details predominates. It's a yacht which weighs 499 tonnes, with a lot of space that we carefully arrange, and it's being built with a class for ''unlimited navigation'', for which the designer Vinko Strizic is in charge, by order of the investor,'' Dapcic stated.

For more, check out Made in Croatia.

ZAGREB, 8 Sept, 2021 - Over 10,000 vessels will be erased from the Croatian registry of boats due to the failure of their owners to pay the navigation safety fee in 2019 and 2020, the Večernji List daily reported on Wednesday.

In late 2020, the Ministry of the Sea and Transport started bringing order to the registry, and so far 21,814 vessels have been removed from the registration list, the daily quoted the ministry as saying.

In October, the ministry will issue decisions on the removal of an additional 10,000 from the registry after it was established that until 15 August this year their owners had failed to pay the navigation safety fee for 2019 and 2020. The navigation safety fees in arrears for 2019 and 2020 exceed HRK 5 million (€666,000).

This national registry covers all Croatian nationality vessels.

Notices of possible removal from the registry will be also forwarded to all port authorities in Croatia and marinas' concession holders.

For more about travel in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.

November 5, 2020 - Made in Split, the incredibly luxurious Golden Horizon is the largest traditional sail ship in the world. Take a look at her before her maiden voyage in spring 2021

Croatia is no stranger to the biggest and most luxurious yachts in the world. But, none of them look like the Golden Horizon. Built in Split to the template of a square-rigged sailing vessel called France II from the year 1913, she is the largest traditional sail ship in the world.

British cruise company Tradewind Voyages is offering places on the first voyage of the ship. The first cruise the world's largest traditional sail ship will undertake will see her sail around the coast and islands of Scotland and England. For the moment, the Golden Horizon is still moored in Split, where she was built.

The ship has 140 cabins and all face outwards, offering views of the sea. The refined but casual interior of the ship's shared spaces are intended to offer all the luxury of a modern cruise ship, but with the romantic ambiance of a traditional sailing vessel.

The largest traditional sail ship in the world is 162 meters long and 18.5 meters wide. It has five steel masts, 35 sails and can accommodate 300 passengers and 150 crew members. It holds a two-floored restaurant that can seat all passengers simultaneously and a glass-bottomed swimming pool.

The design of the ship might be regarded as retro, but its considered construction was specifically undertaken in order to facilitate sustainable holidaymaking. The ship will use its sails and sea currents for around 70% of its propulsion throughout any season.

Accommodation on board varies in size, standard and cost. The premium offer is four apartments of 45 square metres, each with two bathrooms, two showers and a jacuzzi. 34 smaller rooms have balconies and jacuzzis, while the other passenger rooms with windows are located on the lower decks.

The first passengers are expected to board for the debut two-week cruise on 1 May 2021. After its maiden voyage, it will spend the rest of the season touring Iceland, England and Ireland, the Arctic, the Baltic Sea, Norway, Denmark, Spain and Portugal, with each cruise usually lasting seven or fourteen days.

All images © Tradewind Voyages

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A truly stunning vessel visits Croatia's southernmost city of Dubrovnik.

Just recently we reported on Croatia having been placed on Bloomberg's prestigious list of five European countries which attract luxury mega-yachts, and it seems that Croatia is even managing to surpass the likes of Monaco. 

Dubrovnik is no stranger to the rich and the famous and their enormous yachts. Roman Abramovich seems to love anchoring just off the coast of Croatia's southernmost town - Cavtat. While other destinations in Croatia are turning more and more successfully to nautical tourism, Croatia's top destination has been the destination for mega-yachts for years, and it seems that isn't about to change anytime soon.

Yet another luxury visitor has arrived in the Pearl of the Adriatic, and on one of the most luxurious yachts in the entire world.

As Morski writes on the 23rd of July, 2019, the super yacht ''Al Lusail'' owned by Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani of Qatar, sailed into Dubrovnik on Tuesday. It is a luxurious boat, 123 metres in length, with a total of 46 cabins, whose value is estimated at a staggering 300 million US dollars.

The length of the boat is very specific because it is only one metre shorter than that of the vessel belonging to his rich father who visited the southern Dalmatian city in 2016, according to a report from the local portal Dulist.

Make sure to follow our dedicated lifestyle page for much more. If it's just Dubrovnik and the extreme south of Dalmatia you're interested in, give Total Dubrovnik a follow or check out Dubrovnik in a Page.

Sailing in Croatia is of course popular, and there's no better way to get to know the country's 1000+ islands, both inhabited and otherwise, than on board a boat.

While yachts are aplenty along the Croatian coast, particularly in Dalmatia, there is a growing number of luxury super yachts emerging along with Croatia's attempts to successfully brand itself as a nautical tourism destination.

It seems that the country's attempts have more than paid off, as Novac/Filip Pavic writes on the 22nd of July, 2019, an expensive fleet of luxury super-yachts have entered Croatia during the month of July, as Bloomberg reports. According to their calculations, in the last five days there were 55 of them along the Croatian coast, which is double the number when compared to last month.

When looking at comparisons, in the same month last year in Croatia, 42 super-yachts dropped their anchors, meaning there were thirteen less than have been recorded in July 2019. These are luxury motor boats between 24 and 180 metres in length, most of which are equipped with swimming pools, smaller speedboats, and some even with helicopters.

Of the 55 mega yachts we can currently count floating on the Croatian Adriatic, most of them are located in the Split and Dubrovnik areas.

According to Bloomberg, with this figure, Croatia has successfully jumped into the elite society of European nautical destinations.

Croatia has even managed to cut past the famous Monaco, which in recorded only 32 such yachts in July, seeing it end up in fifth place behind Italy, France, Greece, and Spain. Neighbouring Italy is difficult to overtake indeed because in July, it attracted as many as 203 super yachts in its waters. Over the Atlantic in the United States, 142 such yachts have been recorded.

Greece, which is experiencing a major tourism reconstruction, has also grown in the segment of nautical tourism and in July it recorded 134 super yachts in the Ionian and Aegean seas, marking twenty more than there were in June. Rather unexpectedly, the number of such vessels in Spain declined. Of the 123 luxury yachts recorded in Spanish waters in June, their number fell to 92 this month.

Follow our dedicated travel page for much more. Interested in sailing in Croatia yourself? Check out Total Croatia Sailing.

Could Istria be the next big thing for mega-yachts and their owners?

On the 16^th November 2017, Yachts Croatia Magazine hosted an event to celebrate their 50^th Edition; however, it wasn’t just another soiree, they also raised 150,000 kuna for the KBC Split Clinic for Paediatric Surgery.