Lucice Bay

Lučice is a bay on the southern side of the island of Brač, a few miles east of Splitska vrata — the narrow passage that separates Brač from neighbouring Šolta. It is not a village, a resort or a historic site; it is simply one of the best-sheltered natural anchorages in central Dalmatia, and that is precisely why sailing boats, charter flotillas and gulets keep turning up here summer after summer. Despite the name, it has nothing to do with Hvar, and nothing to do with the town of Lučica elsewhere on the coast.

A Bay Shaped Like a Clover

What makes Lučice unusual is that it is not one wide cove but several. The bay branches into five arms — Smrče, Slavinjina, Duboka and Koromaslinova among the names in local use — each one a narrow finger of water with its own strip of beach and its own aspect to the wind. In practice this means that whatever direction the breeze is coming from, there is almost always one arm lying quiet. Bura and tramontana, the northerly and north-westerly winds that make so much of this coast uncomfortable, are blocked by the land behind, although a swell can still roll in for a while after a strong tramontana has blown itself out.

The seabed through most of the bay is sand rather than rock or weed, and that is what gives the water its distinctive pale, sky-blue colour — the shade that turns up in every photograph of the place. Depths run from around 3 metres in the inner arms to roughly 40 metres further out, so there is room for boats of very different sizes. Dense pine forest comes right down to the waterline, which means real shade on the beaches even in the middle of an August afternoon, and the shore itself is pebble and rock rather than sand, so sea shoes are worth having on board. On the western side of the bay there is an underwater cave, enough of a curiosity to have made Lučice a modest local diving stop.

Mooring, Buoys and Konobas

Lučice is a buoy anchorage rather than a marina, and it is organised accordingly. There are 32 mooring buoys laid in the bay, available for both day and overnight use, with the largest concentration — around eighteen of them — in Smrče, the westernmost and best-protected arm. The buoys are run by the waterfront restaurants, which is the usual arrangement along this coast: take a buoy, eat ashore, and the mooring is generally folded into the evening. Several konobas operate around the bay, Barba Luka among them with its own small jetty, and the menus lean on fresh fish, grilled meat and house wine rather than on anything elaborate.

Navigationally the entrance is straightforward but not careless. There are shallows around the western point, Križ Point, and around the tips of the individual arms, so coming in is a matter of keeping a reasonable offing and reading the water. Because the arms are narrow, boats here commonly lie to a buoy with a line ashore to a tree or a ring, which packs the coves efficiently and keeps everyone pointing the same way when the katabatic breeze rolls down off the hill in the evening.

Milna, Two and a Half Kilometres Over the Hill

The nearest town is Milna, about 2.5 kilometres away — roughly a twenty-five-minute walk over the hill, or a short hop by tender around the coast. Milna sits in a deep bay facing directly onto Splitska vrata, which is what made it a serious harbour in the first place. The settlement grew up at the turn of the seventeenth century around a fortified house, the kaštel known locally as Anglišćina, built by the Cerinić family of Nerežišća to defend their land, and it filled out with settlers from the island's interior. For centuries afterwards it was a town of shipowners, captains and shipwrights; its yards built the bracera, the small cargo sailing vessel named after Brač itself.

Today Milna has an ACI marina with 183 berths in the water, along with shops, a bakery, a fuel berth and ferry links, which makes it the natural place to restock before or after a night on the buoys at Lučice. The town lies roughly 12 nautical miles from Split, close enough that Lučice is a classic stop on a Split blue cruise itinerary — usually the first or the last night out, depending on which way the week is running.

The Island Around the Bay

Brač itself repays a look inland. Vidova Gora, at 778 metres, is the highest point not just on Brač but on any Adriatic island, and the view from the top takes in Hvar, Vis and the long shifting spit of Zlatni Rat far below at Bol. The island's white limestone has been quarried since antiquity and went into Diocletian's Palace in Split, which is as neat a summary of Brač's economic history as anything. Nearer to Lučice, the bay of Osibova lies about a kilometre south-west of Milna and offers a similar mix of pine, pebble and clear water for anyone who arrives to find the buoy field already full.