Kornati's to Rovinj (Istria)

Posted at 9:19 AM, Oct. 2, 2007

It is now Sunday night 30^th September and we are anchored in the bay at the Istrian town of Pula in right in front of reputedly one of the best preserved Roman amphitheatres in the world and the sixth largest ever built. With changing times it is now used for concerts and opera  - rather than by the gladiators! 

                       The ampitheatre in Pula - from Savarna at anchor

                                            Inside the ampitheatre

The Istrian peninsular has an interesting and fascinating history with remains of a 5^th century BC Illyrian earthworks here, then a Roman settlement was founded here in 44BC and construction of the amphitheatre started around 41AD by Emperor Claudius. Pula was under Venetian rule from 1331 to 1797 then under Austrian rule (during which time it became the major Austrian naval dockyard), then under Italian rule until, when, after World War 2 it became part of Yugoslavia. If looking at the atlas Istria is in the far north of Croatia with Trieste nearby to the north and about 70 miles across to Venice, and bordering Slovenia to the north.

The town of Pula is pretty uninspiring although it does have some great Roman monuments e.g. Hercules Gate (built 1^st century) and a temple to Emperor Augustus which still stands fully roofed. 

                      Alice and Pam posing in Pula (note the big hips!)

 On Monday 1^st October we up anchored  and relocated to the ACI marina for a planned 24 hours. We found the marina pretty run down and after doing the monuments thing we left around 1730 hrs and motored a further 15 miles up the coast to Rovinj where we are currently anchored having got in here about 2000 hrs. We will use this as a stepping off point for the crossing to Venice provided we can get some diesel and clear Customs out of Croatia.

Folllowing our night in Brbinj on Dugi Otok we motor sailed (with a 8-10 knot headwind at about 25 apparent) the 40 miles further north to the town of Mali Losinj on Otok Losinj. We found this to be a beautiful anchorage and stopped overnight on the town quay at the head of pretty much an enclosed body of water that mean’t it was almost a lake. We are also noticing the different architecture in the north where we presume there has been a more Austrian/Italian influence over the years.

                                        Departing Mali Losinj

The town quay price for us was 220 kuna which was much more realistic than the 370 kuna per night the guys charged us at Rogoznica. The bars and café’s were only metres again and we found an excellent restaurant on the other side of the quay from where we were tied up for dinner. The following morning a Hanse 400E arrived probably to take on provisions as we were also doing. Just as we were casting off one of the guys came along and said I read your  blog and you are going to Venice (as they were also). So if you guys read this we hope to catch up in Venice or maybe put a posting on the blog. Since I put a web counter on the blog in late April nearly 5,000 people have visited the site – so obviously plenty of sailors, armchair sailors and others read the blog – or all our family and friends log on several times every day.

An overnight at Mali Losinj did not do the place justice and we hope to stop in again when we head south back to our berth at Sukosan in a week or so.

From Mali Losinj we had yet another motor sail (with a light headwind yet again) to Pula – another 35 mile passage. Earlier today we had a call from Michael Dunlop who is chartering for a week out of Kremik but he was in Hvar which is about 160 miles south of where we now are so unfortunately we will not catch up with them. The other big news of the last couple of days is that we managed to land a very decent sized tuna on the passage to Mali Losinj which will last several dinners – the first of which was had last night at anchor in Pula. The biggest tuna we (Pam) has caught in our Med travels so far.

Weather remains pretty reasonable although a few days ago we had a couple of nights of heavy rain and a temperature drop of 10 degrees overall – but back to normal now thank goodness.

That’s all for now – will post again from Venice.

Cheers

Keith

PS posting this on Tuesday morning en route to Venice