WINGSPAN 2011
Croatia
Story by Jennifer Wallace Photographs by Robert Wallis
ISlands Out of History
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Trogir Split
Makarska
Adriatic Sea Hvar
Hvar
Vis Komiza Vis
Korcula
Korcula
Dubrovnik
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E
ight winds blow on the Adriatic, and each one has a different name and a different character. Maestral is the partying thermal wind from the northwest, the friend to summer sailors since it wakes up slowly in the hangover mornings before gathering speed in the lazy afternoons. No-nonsense, bracing Bura blows cold and clear from the northeast, bringing blue skies and good, hard sailing as autumn leaves turn gold. Tramontana is the trickster from the north, gusting suddenly on a deceptively calm day. Levenat, Ostro, Lebic and Punenat have their own quirks and foibles. When we arrive at Kastela Marina outside Split, Jugo,
a month. He has promised to take us to Vis, the remotest island and his favorite. But the first night we go no further than the marina, sleeping in our cabin as the storm rages outside. The next morning, Jugo is still blowing, although its ferocity has waned, and we set off, ex-president Tito’s former mansion on the shore, and reach the starting line of the postponed Mrduja regatta just as the gun goes off. “There’s a saying in Croatia: ‘Beware the rainy Bura and the sunny Jugo’,” shouts Vinko, by way of encouragement as the rain runs down inside our collars and we chase the hundred sailboats speeding on their course.
Yachts sailing into anchorage at Korcula Town (pages 10-11), a medieval walled city possibly Marco Polo’s birthplace, may have been in the luminous sunset of Kastela Marina, near Split, or passed Makarska, a coastal resort city with a palm-fringed promenade.
the heavy bully from the south, has been raging all night, bringing thunderstorms and white-capped waves, and the dock is a running river of water. So wild are the conditions that the annual Mrduja regatta, the oldest in the Adriatic, has been cancelled for the day, and the marina cafe is filled with wet, frustrated yachties. “Jugo always brings bad moods,” Vinko Majica, our skipper for the week, tells us, as we peep out through the wall of rain at the line of masts stretched along the dock. Vinko has agreed to guide our small, 9.8-meter sailboat, called Alia, for a week around the idyllic south Dalmatian islands between Dubrovnik and Split. His father was a mechanical engineer on a container ship, and his grandfather served in the Yugoslavian navy. Now aged 28, he has been making a living on boats since the age of 16, his fondest memory the summer he spent with his father in 1993, just “sailing wherever the wind took us” for over 12
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Now We Are Free Like the different winds that dominate the Adriatic, many empires have ruled Croatia, from ancient Rome to, among others, renaissance Venice and the 19th-century Austrian-Hungarian empire. Most recently, Croatia was part of the Yugoslavian federation, and the war that accompanied the breakup of that federation, which ended 16 years ago, is still a vivid memory. This is evident most strongly in the walled town of Dubrovnik, the UNESCO World Heritage city, which survived a yearlong siege and is full of tales of brave endurance. But throughout its turbulent history, a strong, independent spirit has always persisted in the country, inspired partly by its connection to the sea, and now that beautiful coastline is playing a crucial role in the remarkable recovery after the war. “Croatians have only started appreciating the natural beauty of their country in the last fifteen years,” I was told
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in Split, before we set out on our voyage. “Before that, we were thinking of other things; we were part of a larger state. But now we are free, we are discovering our beauty.” By the afternoon of the first day, Jugo has given way to Ostro from the southeast, the sun has come out, and we tack up between the Pakleni Islets and the island of Hvar, the photographer and Vinko and I learning to work as a team for the first time. Hvar town is radiant with the golden late afternoon light. This is the yachting mecca of the Adriatic, the favored destination of fashionistas ever since the 19th cen-
tury. The island was originally colonized by the Greeks and became the center of the Croatian renaissance in the 16th century, home to poets like Petar Hektorovic, whose well-known poem tells the tale of a boat trip with two local fishermen. The island is also famous for lavender, which must be harvested in the cool early hours of the morning; later in the day, when the sun beats down on the flowers, the pickers risk being overpowered by the heady vapors and passing out. In recent years, fires have somewhat damaged the industry, but still the scent of lavender oil wafts around the narrow stone-and-ivy backstreets of the old town, amidst the smell of pressed grapes from the family wine presses in each yard and the sound of children practicing piano scales. We drop anchor in the harbor (the much sought-after dock space is already full) and row ashore to drink posip white wine and watch the fashionable stroll along the waterfront in the sunset. South of Hvar is the island of Korcula, most notably the supposed birthplace of Marco Polo. Although only 2 km from the mountainous Peljesac Peninsula on the mainland, the island is proud of its particular history and unique traditions. Korcula men continue to perform an
Samples of life on three Adriatic islands—on and off the water—include sailing the salty foam around Vis; grape harvest at Cara, primary growing area on Korcula of famous posip white wine; and twilight’s soft illumination in the harbor of Stari Grad, on Hvar.
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The Lighthouse Keeper
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van Bulic Ico is the keeper of one of the last manned lighthouses in the Adriatic, on the northeast point of Vis Island. Stoncica Lighthouse, built in 1865, is several miles from the nearest road and can be reached only by a narrow footpath over the cliffs from the safe anchorage of Stoncica Bay. The keeper works one month in the lighthouse and
one month off, cleaning and checking the lights at Stoncica and at six other island lighthouses, sending r egular weather repor ts to the mainland, and keeping a constant watch for boats in distress. Ico has saved a fishing boat and a 70-year-old lady who fell off the cliffs into the sea and broke her leg while catching octopus. “When I save a life, I
feel good,” he says. “That’s what I work for.” Ico has worked at Stoncica since 1998. “I came here, and I lost some things and gained some things. …But”—he gestures at the waves crashing on the rocks, the high lonely tower, the cliffs in the sunset—“I gained this.”
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old dance with swords (known as Moreska), which once was practiced around the whole Mediterranean. The dance, featuring a battle between the Red King and the Black King, is performed once a year, on St. Theodore’s day, July 29, but we manage to witness a reenactment, during which the swords clash so violently that we can see the sparks fly. According to Stanka Kraljevic, each family in Korcula still belongs to an ancient medieval guild, with different guilds in charge of different festivals, and each competing to be the best. The role of the Black King in the Moreska, for example, has been danced by the De Paulo family for generations. There are no fewer than 55 festival processions in the year. Stanka, a school Latin teacher and a warm-hearted, formidable force of nature, offers to show Churches and icons have their place in island life, as seen in early evening on Komiza (below) and in Komiza’s harbor by day, with a 16thcentury fortress in the background, as well as in a night scene of Split that combines medieval and Roman architecture.
us her island, from the Moreska to the Marco Polo house in the magical walled and turreted main town (actually, as Stanka points out with characteristic scholarly skepticism, a 17th-century house on the site where the De Paulo house once stood), to the olive groves and vineyards of the interior. We stop at the village of Cara, center of the exquisite wine I have been drinking avidly all trip. The grapes are being harvested by the whole Tomic family, who owns the vineyard. “Nobody knows how the grapes got here or when they were started. It’s tradition. It goes back thousands of years,” says Augustin Tomic. Nowadays the grapes are crushed by machine; all the vineyard owners are queuing up in their tractors at the Cara co-op to get their harvest processed. But until recently it was done by foot. Stanka remembers in her childhood that families would even dip a small child into the vat of grapes because they believed it would give the child strength.
Historic Feuds The day comes, however, when the wind blows around 20 knots from the south (“still Jugo but sunny,” says Vinko without alarm), and everything is set fair for our crossing to Vis, the most isolated and most idyllic island of the archipelago. Other boats on the same course decide to shorten their sails, but our genoa and mainsail remain full, and we toss and tack over the waves towards the mysterious, mountainous hump on the horizon and its beckoning lighthouse (see page 15). Until 1989, Vis was a military zone and closed to outsiders. Even today, it is riddled with secret tunnels and bunkers, some dating back to WWII, when Tito made 16
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the island his headquarters in his battle among the Partisans against the Nazi-occupied mainland, and others dating to the more recent Cold War, when the island was the furthest outpost of nonaligned Yugoslavia against NATO in Italy. The paradoxical result of the military presence has been to preserve Vis against modern development, to
keep both its nature and its old towns pristine. There are two small towns on the island just 18 km apart, which are great rivals, Vis in the north and Komiza in the southwest. “Komiza is a fishing village and Vis is agricultural,” explains Ivan Ivicevic Bakulic when we dock in Vis town. He returned six years ago to his old family house, which his grandparents had to leave during WWII, to open it as a traditional restaurant. “There are two different mentalities. Komiza is more Sicilian, out in the streets, loud, excitable. In Vis, we keep to ourselves, stay in the house, show a northern mentality.” Bakulic’s great grandfather lived in Vis town all his life and visited Komiza only once. While Vis town has its charms, Komiza seduces the visitor more readily with its vivacity and beauty. Facing west, the town is bathed every afternoon in golden sunlight, as the fisherman sort their nets and go out in their boats and others—women, old men, kids—stand in a line, hanging their rods over the sea wall. All the villagers, it seems, are out on the streets, and with no cars, the only sound is of excited friendly chatter. More than anywhere else we have visited so far, this town feels like the back-ofbeyond, a place outside history.
Wild Capers Our sailing course to Komiza from Vis town is actually round the south of the island by way of Bisevo, a small Among delights surrounding the island of Vis are the Blue Cave—a sea grotto on the islet of Bisevo, reachable only by boat, five nautical miles southwest of Vis—and fresh local seafood cooked on an open fire at Stoncica Bay (known as the “Hawaii of Vis”).
The Old Sea Captain
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atko Marinovic’s house, in the medieval walled town of Korcula, is a treasure trove of naval memorabilia, from old, grainy photographs of his sea captain father, grandfather and great grandfathers to his collection of sextants and telescopes in the crow’s nest of a room at the top of the house. “I’m the seventh generation of master mariners,” he says proudly. Captain Marinovic star ted in 1966, aged 19, traveling the world from Canada to West Africa, the Red Sea and India. Coming from Korcula, he feels that he is following in an ancient maritime tradition that stretches back to the ancient Greeks and beyond. The ancient Illyrians invented the bireme ships (ships with two ranks of oarsmen) in Korcula, which the Romans later copied and extended with their triremes. And he can remember, as a child, seeing the chains hauling the big wooden ships ashore in the heart of Korcula town for repair. Like generations of Marinovic sons, he ran away to sea. “It’s in our blood,” he says, “We’ve a particular feeling for the sea, being par t of an island… Even now I miss it, the spray in the face… feeling the ship through my feet on the deck, sipping my coffee, talking to my chief officer.” JUNE 2011
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semi-inhabited islet, which is renowned for a spectacular phenomenon, the Blue Cave. For just one hour a day, the sun strikes an underwater tunnel at the right angle so that the cave inside is illuminated. We sail there at just the perfect time, shortly before noon, and paddle the dingy over the choppy water into a blindingly electric-blue cavernous space. The magical, otherworldly mood continues afterwards with a visit to Vinko’s cousin, Lilian Bozanic,
who has set up an eco project on the island with her husband and dog Bura, living in harmony with nature and taking in guests to stay in the rough huts they have built. We sit round the table they have created out of a twisted tree, chatting, drinking their homemade rakija (herbflavored brandy) and eating wild capers and cheese. The late-afternoon sail back from Bisevo to Komiza is the best of the trip, a beam reach on an unusually steady Tramontana wind, the boat speeding at nearly eight knots. At the beginning of the week, I was trying to learn how to sail according to the rules. Now, finally, I realize that real sailing is based not on theory but on how you feel, the boat and the wind working in harmony, the moment when you sense physically the wind catching the sail determining the course. It’s the perfect harmony of sun, sea, boat and man, which the paradisiacal island of Vis—and indeed all the Dalmatian islands—seems to have achieved, I think, as we dock in Komiza’s bustling harbor, between the fishing boats, and head for the simple but perfect dinner of fish and wine.
Croatian culture, history and taste are reflected everywhere, from a traditional Korcula country taverna appetizer (cheese, olives, roasted peppers and sardines with herbal brandy rakija) to the Citadel, built in 1550 by the Venetians, above trendy Hvar.
Getting There Croatia Airlines, a Star Alliance airline par tner of ANA, ser ves Split from Frankfur t, Paris and other ANA destinations.
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On the Web Croatian National Tourist Office: www.croatia.hr Sail Croatia: www.sailcroatia.net Croatia Airlines: www.croatiaairlines.com