Northern Dalmatia. Veli Rat to Murter

There are so many islands, I find it impossible to keep them in my head. It would take years to explore them properly and we only have a few weeks. We are loaded up with first-class tips from Jean Pierre, Dominique, Cosi, Serenity and the CA so we have decided to mostly stick to places recommended as we have more than enough to fill the time available.

Anchorage

First stop was on a small island off Mali Losinj. This is a lovely free anchorage. Very quiet and rural with clear water and turquoise sand. We liked it so much we stayed for a couple of days. Lucifer liked it as he got lots of walks in the woods.

Lucifer hunting Lizards and Crickets

 We went into Mali Losing early in hope of tying up at the marina for free, buying a fill of water, doing some shopping then scooting through the 0900 bridge. It all worked perfectly, we were helped in by friendly staff,  only charged for water (40Kuna) Lindsay got good supplies and we made the bridge. Scary stuff going through it though, th e 100M channel is only 10M wide and had a current and a big swell been pushed into the eastern end. I was glad to get through unscathed.

We arrived at a sheltered bay at the North end of Dugi Otok which contains the town of Veli Rat. The bay is huge, quiet and sheltered but a lot of buoys have been laid and the owners are rather greedy charging 20Kuna per meter. As a result I suspect, most of them are empty. We took one for the night as it was too late to move by the time they came around but moved off into a little inlet of the east headland which is excellent holding and completely free.
Veli Rat is  a sleepy little place. It has one hard-working mini market, a post office that doesn't open till 11.00 (baybe) and a tourist office, that although signposted, is completely invisible. From the head of our free anchorage, a path leads the short walk to another sleepy village - Verunici. The minimarket/restaurant/bar/apartments is all run by one family and seems more friendly and go-ahead. We arrived on Saturday afternoon to find the minimarket shut - but the owner spotted us and ran round to open up for us - with a smile!

Submarine Pen

Next destination was Vodenjak on Otok IZ. We sailed round the North East cape and then turned South. A few miles down we came across an abandoned submarine pen. It looked quite modern so probably dates from the Tito/Yugoslavia era. Since then we have seen several more so we now realise it wasn't all that unusual but at the time it was really quite exciting.
Vodenja is an anchorage (actually buoy field) at the south end of Otok Iz. A lovely place.They charge 15Kuna per meter but it seems worth it because they go out of their way to provide a grerat service. They're there wioth a RIB to help picking up the buoy, the can take rubbish and bring simple shopping and they are friendly an speak excellent English (particularly Tina). We finally met up with Tony Belchamber on China Blue and passed an excellent evening shooting the breeze.
Next day we headed to Sali on Dugi Otok in search of water, shopping and tickets to the Telascica Naure Park. Found all three (40Kuna for water, no charge for tieing up for a couple of hours). Tickets only cost 150Kuna per day if bought outside the park - 200Kuna inside. Once in the park, All anchoring and buoys are free. And so on to Telascica.

What a lovely place! Green, peaceful, unspoiled, with loads of beautifully sheltered bays - both anchorages and buoy fields. The Mir salt lake is particularly unusual - it's connected to the sea only by underground cracks in the rocks and there is very little fresh water catchment. So water evaporates and is replaced with more seawater. It's not quite dead sea standard but swimming is definitely interesting. With your own boat, you can wait till the day-tripper boats have gone and have the place virtually to yourself. We stayed for three days then headed to Murter

Zminjak Restaurant Pontoon

Fresh Mussels!

We decided to treat ourselves to a meal out on the small island of Ziminjak just outside Murter harbour - a very good decision! Bouys or the pontoon are free if you eat and the food is excellent and very reasonable. They grow their own mussels on ropes off the pontoon and harvest them to order. The surroundings are lovely and the staff is friendly - thoroughly recommended. We took the dinghy into town from there but it is a longish treck.





Next day we anchored in the main harbour. Put the hook down between the boatyard and the opposite end of the beach. It's well sheltered, free and good holding. There is an excellent supermarket at the town-end of the beach and another less good by the marina. The fuel pontoon is copetitively priced though rather chaotically organised. There are two mediocre chandlers in town and lots of other shops.
Quite a bit of non-offensive tourist infrastructure including a rather cool semi-submersible...