Princess Nayeli: From Zadar to Šibenik and Noga’s bay

We sailed to Šibenik today (pronounced Shibenik). We had the feeling of returning home. After all, we’ve already been here 4 times before (We chartered a boat here twice), we like the place and the people, and this is where we got to know Grand Soleil. We chartered a twin boat to Princess Nayeli here – the Matterhorn.

Zadar is a nice old city, where you can still see Roman and Venetian construction. We had a surprisingly great time walking around the old city at night. The one BIG problem that they have here is the smell of the water. It seems like sewage flows straight into the bay. We met in Zadar a French guy (in his late 60’s I believe) named Jean Claude Maman. He has a twin Grand Soleil, same design as Princess Nayeli. He became extremely nice to us once he understood we’re from Israel. He happens to have cousins in Netanya.

So we left Zadar early in the morning of Wednesday the 16th, and stopped for a morning swim in a small bay on Ugljan (pronounced Ulian). The bays in this area have the clearest water I’ve ever seen. You could see every stone on the bottom from the deck with depths of 10m.
From Ugljan we started the tour on the national parks of Dogi Otok and Kornati. The south bay on Dogi Otok is a national park with beautiful high cliffs rising from the sea, and a salt lake. Tons of excursion boats take hundreds or thousands of tourists over here every day. We didn’t find it so attractive. The water in the bay was not clear at all and the salty lake was not something to write home about… It was also when entering that bay that I got a little sick (a little bit of nausea and maybe some fever), and the following day Noga Shaulsky had the same thing. A day later, we all recovered.

From Dogi Otok, we sailed along the long Kornati island in the west channel between Kornati and the hunders of small islands to its west. We sailed close hauled all day, in a low wind day, and were almost the only boat sailing. All the rest of the boats, and there were hundreds of them, just motored up or down the island.
We ended up in a popular, but very nice bay on the island of Kakan. There were maybe 70 boats here, but it’s such a large bay that it’s not a problem. The bay was crystal clear. We could see some starfish, some huge shells (about 10cm), and some sea urchins.

Starting from Šibenik, the wind really got better. We sailed from Šibenik to Drevnik with the Spinnaker the whole day. We were running 6-8 knots in a very pleasant sail. Then from Drevnik to Noga’s bay we did 5-6 knots on a 6-7 knot wind. This boat is fast!

Fishing doesn’t go so well so far. We haven’t fished a single fish from the drag fishhook. We did catch some on the dock but nothing significant.

We’re starting to see the end of the first leg. We should be in Dubrovnik by the end of the week. Naama says that it’s unbelievable that already a month has passed. Time passed so quickly. In Dubrovnik we’re changing crew. Yael and the girls are taking a 10 day break at home and I’m sailing with friends to Corfu where I would meet the family again.

Some pictures from this period: