Customer Reviews

Croatia Cruising Companion (Wiley Nautical)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This cruising guide is not as comprehensive as US guides and Carribean guides that we are used to. Navigation info is not as detailed and the chartlets are sketchy at best. Overall as good a guide as you are likely to find for Croatia and certainly adequate for the careful sailor.

Used this book almost exclusively on our 10 day sailing trip through the dalmation islands. The charter company had provided another book with similar information but this Cruising Companion provided better information and a clearer description of what to expect at each marina or anchor.

I purchased the Wiley Croatia Cruising Companion 6 months before our Dalmatian coast sailing adventure. It helped me plot our routes and island stops. It is not strong on restaurant reviews but it details each harbor and what can be found there. The photos alone are worth the price of admission.
It gives navigation guidance for each harbor entry which I used to carefully plot our gps waypoints. I also purchased the Garmin digital charts for my Garmin hand held GPS Plotter. the Garmin charts also load into my laptop so I could PRE Plot all the possible routes and safe harbor entries.
While most navigation in Croatia is line of sight, if it rains or fogs in you might want to have safe waypoints guiding you around the shallows of some harbor entries. There are very few nab aids warning about rocks or ledges. This is not New England. NO money is spent on buoys or day markers.
Buy the book, there is not much competition for cruising guides for Croatia published in English.
The Sunsail boat did not have another version on board as they do in the Caribbean. They give you a pile of charts and wish you luck.
Experienced Sailor and Navigation Instructor.

I can't speak yet for the content, that will take using the book on site in Croatia to determine it's accuracy. However, I was immediately surprised and disappointed to feel the heft and realize how hard the hardcover is. These cruising grounds are halfway around the world. We each take one very lightweight carry-on suitcase and need to conserve weight and room for a trip of six weeks. Toting this tome will be a chore although necessary since we need information about an area new to us. There are good photos and drawings but surely these and the cover could have been produced in a more user-friendly manner.

Just back from a 10 day sail from Split to Dubrovnik and found the Croatia Cruising Companion to be very helpful. It was a great planning tool before we left the States for our first trip to Croatia. It provides good general background information, a background on each island we visited and sections on each overnight stop including navigation, berthing, anchoring, facilities, and what you will find ashore. Along with layouts of each berthing area, we knew what to expect and what appealed to us. I would recommend it to anyone considering sailing in Croatia. You may also want to take look at their blog at [...]

We planned our week-long sailing trip in Croatia using this book and found it to be mostly accurate. A few anchorages were different than the descriptions,(closed restaurants, one charged us to anchor which wasn't mentioned, one was very rolly) some holding ground was not as good as they wrote, but overall it was helpful and easy to follow.

This book has a good amount of general background information about sailing Croatia's coast and islands, including culture, language, weather, and topography. However, its real value is in the very detailed information available on so many locations like anchorages,islands, marinas, and beaches. The drawings and descriptions have enough detail to give a person confidence to sail around these unfamiliar places.

A couple of changes that I think would help: 1) the book is hardbound, and a sturdy ring or spiral bound edition would make it easier to use while at the helm; and 2) as the narrative proceeds down the coast, an occasional, broader map view to give the specific locations more context would help when selecting a course from several options.