Wish You Were Here — Croatia’s Dalmatian Coast
Our founder and editor-in-chief pens a piece about what brought her to Croatia, the splendors of sailing and why she never wants to stop going back. With postcard prose, Cate gives you a glimpse into a sailing trip down the Dalmatian coast.
It’s strange to think I’ve only had 29 summers. Closer to thirty than ever, I’ve felt this weight of getting older lately. But when I think about it in the sense that I’ve only gotten to experience summer 29 times, it doesn’t feel like nearly enough. And I don’t think it ever will be.
So when I tell you now that I want to keep spending summers on Croatia’s Dalmatian coast, that says a lot.
My first trip to Croatia was in 2019, island hopping with my new clients, Sailweek. “You really have to experience what our trips are all about to write for us,” Duje, the company’s operations manager, told me. So I obliged, and that June, hopped on board.
If you’ve ever been sailing, you know there’s nothing like it — that feeling of being carried by the wind. But it’s life on board that I like most. I’ve never slept better than I have up on the deck of a yacht and under the stars, rocked to sleep by the tide. All year I coax myself to sleep thinking of those nights, humid air in my lungs, moonlight on my cheeks, never feeling safer.
At home, I can’t function without coffee, but when sailing, all I need to do is open my eyes and jump in the sea. There’s no better wake-up than floating weightless like in a dream, yet feeling so refreshingly cool you know you’re awake.
More than just trying to escape the gloom of Dutch summer — if you can even call it that — this year, I was also yearning for the simplicity and ease we once knew. Before the pandemic, I’d gotten to the point where I was just traveling whenever I wanted — many times booking flights and accommodation the day before I left. There weren’t restrictions to check, tests to take, or really any major logistics to coordinate beforehand. It was easy.
So this year when I called up Duje and told him I couldn’t take it anymore, I’d been grounded too long and needed to get out of the Netherlands, I jumped when he said, “We’ve got a spot open on a boat in two weeks — should I just book you for it?”
“Yes. It felt impulsive and a little chaotic, but that’s one of the things I’d missed about travel so much over the past year. The adventure.”
What ensued was just that — moments where all you can hear are your heartbeat and the wind battering the sails, or all you can taste are dusty roads on your tongue as you round the bend through hillside vineyards.
I’m not usually one for group travel, but I was a shy kid, and it feels like growth to jump on board with a bunch of strangers who turn into friends. And after a year in my small, but beloved, bubble, it was refreshing to see new faces and hear new stories.
I could tell you all my favorite moments, but I’d rather not. Moonlight skinnydips and shenanigans aboard a yacht are really only best experienced. I will tell you this, though — on and below the surface, it’s beautiful here.
There are quiet bays where you won’t see another boat in sight and thumping towns where people lift you on tables to dance. There are calm waters that soothe you and keels that turn your knuckles white. You can flock to pebble beaches that are splashed in the magazines, and for dinner, eat what pop caught with mom’s wine pairing.
More often than not people here will — despite the pain — confide in you about the war, or open up their home and let you try their homemade Rakia, cheese and honeyed sweets. There’s water so clear and pure you can’t touch the bottom without fear of getting pricked by a sea urchin — a bittersweet realization. And I lied above when I said the best wake-up is a jump in the sea, when it is, in fact, by the man who putters over in a small boat at sunrise with a bag full of warm croissants for breakfast.
