Why the distant Croatian island of Vis could possibly be the very best crusing break within the Mediterranean

Sailor Pino Vojković is late for our rendezvous on the harbour of Komiža village. “I’ll be five minutes,” he guarantees, after I name. He arrives in 20. I can’t faux I thoughts. It’s nearly a decade since my final go to to Vis and I’d forgotten how stunning Komiža is. The island has not too long ago acquired a cachet as a bohemian bolthole, its popularity bolstered because the filming location of 2018’s Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again. Why create film units that illustrate feel-good escapism once they’re ready-made on Vis?

Despite the Hollywood kudos, Croatia’s most distant inhabited island, 34 miles from Split by direct ferry, stays pleasantly low-key. On Komiža’s charming green-shuttered sq., villagers are as garrulous as starlings over morning espresso. Stone homes jostle alongside the shore and a stubby fortress guards the harbour the place fisherfolk in sun-faded overalls kind nets. Romantic, properly scruffy, Vis feels touched by magic.

Time on this island feels elastic. It stretches. Unspools. Maybe that’s why tour operator Intrepid named it amongst its annual ‘not hot’ record of 10 ignored locations to go to in 2026. And though tourism on the island stays small scale, worldwide builders have began to take word.

It’s my want to decelerate and be taught extra concerning the island’s heritage that’s led me to fulfill Pino — founding father of Alternatura tour firm, which owns two of solely 4 remaining falkuša crusing boats, the normal picket fishing vessels of Komiža. They have been resurrected to run crusing journeys for guests, but in addition to rekindle an vital aspect of native historical past. When we meet beside them on the harbour, surrounded by fashionable boats, their swooping black hulls and sails swagged alongside varnished spars give the impression of one thing from The Odyssey.

A falkuša is an “endless poem”, Pino tells me as he prepares for sea; tightening the ropes that help the mast and loosening sail-ties. For centuries, the eight-metre sardine boats have been the delight of the Adriatic. While different Mediterranean fishermen hugged the coast, these of Komiža sailed throughout open sea to say the richest fishing grounds.

After the final falkuša sank in 1986 — changed by extra fashionable motorised, fibreglass boats — a duplicate was constructed by a Komiža analysis undertaking, Cultural Association Ars Halieutica, for the 1998 World Fair in Lisbon. The response was astonishing. Within a yr, Unesco had put the falkuša on its World Heritage List. Within 20 years, two extra boats had been constructed.

That singularity of Vis — the way it appears a separate world — explains a lot of the island’s enchantment. Yet on an island tour earlier that day, historical past information Marko Raduka had delivered to life Vis’s pivotal function within the Adriatic. As we stood in entrance of a monastery, he defined how its curved rear wall was a part of a Roman amphitheatre and informed how historical Greeks and Romans had crossed the Adriatic by way of Vis; Julius Caesar known as it “the most distinguished in the region”. At a Georgian fort, Marko had restaged a British naval victory over Napoleon. And in tunnels that regarded like a Bond villain’s lair, he’d described how Vis was a partisan stronghold within the Second World War, earlier than changing into a Yugoslav naval base off-limits to tourism till 1989.

History continues to tug at me as we begin to motor throughout Komiža harbour on our vessel. A person in a vest waves from his entrance door. A cliff wraps an arm across the bay forward. Pino pauses off a shingle seashore backed by a dated white lodge. This yr, it will likely be remodeled right into a five-star luxurious lodge. It’s an exquisite spot: a scimitar of pine-scrubbed shingle that arcs earlier than a sea that shades from turquoise to cobalt blue.

Our sails go up past the harbour, opening up like spring flowers in a lightweight breeze that pulls us in the direction of the ocean. Pino additionally runs widespread speedboat journeys to go to the Blue Cave at Biševo island, however says crusing is his ardour. “When you sail, you’re in the moment, you’re in nature. It’s magnificent. And a falkuša is real Komiža heritage.”

We transfer at round 4mph; the ocean chuckling, the boat’s varnished wooden like gold within the sunshine. Komiža blurs behind us, a smudge of ivory stone and terracotta roofs beneath scrubby mountains. Occasionally, a speedboat races previous. It strikes me that in an age that prizes velocity, there’s one thing radical in travelling slowly. And it’s solely made presumably because of Pino’s ardour to safeguard the island’s falkuša heritage. Our wake is like an unfastening zip. The open sea forward is a bolt of silk unrolled to the horizon.