Summer Sailing in Central Dalmatia – Day 4. Hvar / Vela Luka
We left Vela Luka early in the morning and headed further south to Hvar. Today the plan is to reach Stari Grad and have a lunch at the Bilo Idro underwater winery.
Unfortunately we could only approach Hvar from the water because there is no mooring possibility in the town. Hvar has no marina, the nearest marina is ACI Palmizana at the Pakleni islands where you can get to the town by water taxis. We really liked that area so we will definitely come back at a later time.
Approaching Hvar
We sailed by a small island Pokonji Dol what has a lighthouse and some other buildings. Interestingly I saw on TV that the lighthouse is also rented so if you are after perfect privacy 500m from Hvar you have the option.
Around noon we reached the Bilo Idro underwater winery. They supposed to have a great restaurant and some mooring places behind a breakwater and wine cellar which is fully under sea level. We moored alongside at the breakwater quite easily. Unfortunately the restaurant was not open yet as we were too early in the season, so we could not try it. We visited the winery and bought some wines.
On the way to Vela Luka our autopilot stopped working. First we thought it could be software issue as it was a brand new boat so we performed some calibration but it did not help unfortunately. We got the toolbox and checked the autopilot mechanism in the starboard stern cabin it turned out one screw holding spring fell apart. It looked like definitely a quality control issue, anyway we managed to fix it and after calibration it worked like a charm.
Unfortunately in Vela Luka we arrived late and there were no moorings nor buoys left. We motored to the neighbouring bay (Uvala Plitvine) and found a mooring buoy. After we moored successfully ten minutes later a motorboat appeared and collected the 200 HRK for the buoy. There was only a gulet and a german couple on a Bavaria se we enjoyed our sundowner in perfect tranquility. There are excellent wines in Croatia too but for this occasion we had our favourite rose from Hungary.
