Kvarner

Kvarner is not a single destination but a whole region — the gulf of the northern Adriatic that sits between the Istrian peninsula and the Croatian Littoral, well north of Zadar and the Dalmatian coast. It is a genuinely separate sailing area, generally chartered from bases around Rijeka, Opatija or Pula rather than combined into a Zadar-based itinerary.

Its main islands, Krk and Cres, are the two largest in the Adriatic, joined by the smaller Losinj and Rab and well over a hundred lesser islands and islets. Rijeka anchors the gulf's northern end, while Opatija, just along the coast, grew from a fishing village into a fashionable Habsburg health resort in the 19th century — Villa Angiolina was built there in 1844, and by 1889 the town was officially recognised as a spa resort, drawing visitors including Emperor Franz Joseph, Empress Elisabeth and Gustav Mahler.

The waters around Cres and Losinj also host one of the Mediterranean's longest-running dolphin studies: a resident population of roughly 100 to 180 bottlenose dolphins, monitored continuously since 1987 by the Blue World Institute, in what became the Mediterranean's first marine protected area for dolphins. For anyone sailing this far north on the Croatian coast, many gulet cruises in Croatia call in here, on itineraries built specifically around the Kvarner islands rather than tacked onto a Dalmatian route.