Mark and Martha arrived as scheduled Friday and Saturday afternoon we walked down from the hotel to our first glimpse of the Andeo. The captain, Niksa, and his crew Vedran and Petar were there to stow the luggage and greet us. Niksa is from a sailing family and has owned the boat since 2005. It is clearly the love of his life, after Marija of course and it shows in the meticulous care and attention showered upon it by the three crew. It was quite warm, but pretty soon we were under sail, drinking wine and eating the snacks that had been prepared for us. Vedran, a trained chef, worked miracles in the small kitchen, each day turning out beautiful breakfasts and then either lunch or dinner according to our wants. The pictures here show our first view of the Andeo; Martha, Don and Gwenna cooling off in the sea; and the breakfast table the next morning.
Just as a preface to the week's cruise, we visited four islands: Mljet, Korkula, Hvar and Brac. There are more than 1,100 islands off the coast of Croatia, only 47 of them inhabited. Many are barely blips of land jutting out of the sea. Many others look like some developer could make a fortune with a modest investment in a few luxury inns and restaurants. This development will inevitably come, of course, but for now it is amazingly unspoiled. Most of the islands in our view are uninhabited. In the major ports though, like Dubrovnik, it is scary to imagine the number of people that will one day overwhelm the limited space.
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