After stagnation due to the situation caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the first passengers of the first Croatian super yacht, Katina, were received.
As Novac/Jozo Vrdoljak writes on the 19th of August, 2020, two families with children arrived, four adults and seven children, who will sail on Katina on the Croatian side of the Adriatic for seven days. As the captain of that 60-metre-long yacht, Antonio Koludrovic, reveals, these are charter guests who will stay for seven days, and then after two days Katina will welcome more new guests. Katina sails in the Caribbean, the Bahamas or the Seychelles for half a year, and spends half the season in the Mediterranean.
The first Croatian super yacht was in operation in the Seychelles for four weeks at the end of last year and the beginning of this year, and they managed to remain in operation for another four weeks because guests decided to give up on using big cruisers and instead rented Katina.
According to Koludrovic, they managed to gain those four weeks in the Seychelles because of the pandemic, but there was a cancellation two weeks into July following the tennis tournament debacle in Zadar. This year, the yacht charter, as the captain of Katina noted, is solid because big cruisers aren’t operating. However, despite that, guests are still planning to travel at the last minute.
”We boarded the first guests on the Adriatic this year in Split and sailed to Dubrovnik and then we returned to Split. These are often Forbes-listed guests, vacationing on this Croatian super yacht with their families,” the captain revealed.
Apart from some people wanting special food requirements, the guests don’t really ask for anything special. Katina’s crew will also organise parties for children and more. The vessel also boasts its own aqua-park.
”The price of seven-day stay such as that mentioned stands at around 300,000 euros. As part of that price, guests receive everything: three daily meals, including drinks, the fuel is paid for, as are all of the implied port taxes,” the captain stated.
”Princesses from Saudi Arabia, current and former presidents, and Arab princes have stayed on Katina. The most interesting of them all was a group of Russians and Brits who came with a guide. They came to fish in the Indian Ocean for two weeks. This year we will certainly have twelve weeks of charter, which is satisfactory for 2020 as four weeks guarantee sustainability. This year everything is different,” the captain of this Croatian super yacht noted, who has been working on yachts for 21 years, but has been attached to ships since he was a child.
”My family, who is from Stomorska on Solta, has been renting boats since 1958, when my nono started driving the French and then the Germans around. We had a wine boat that we later transformed into a tourist boat,” added Koludrovic.
This impressive Croatian super yacht is sixty metres long, its four decks in the six VIP cabins can accommodate twelve passengers cared for by fifteen crew members and three shore-based employees, and are designed for cruising the Mediterranean and the Caribbean. Guests come from Saudi Arabia, Israel, Argentina, Brazil, Great Britain, Russia, Ukraine, Austria…
”Katina was constructed in Brodosplit, the entire crew is local, and as far as the Adriatic is concerned, we can rightly say that we can give the guests the most and show them the most,” Koludrovic pointed out. Brigita Vuleta has been working aboard the vessel for several months, and detailed her experiences:
”There are of course some more demanding guests, but also those who have almost no requirements, they simply behave normally and casually. Some are initially professional or colder towards the crew, and some immediately start communicating on a more friendly, open level. It has also been noticed that both types of guest, sooner or later, want to communicate with the crew. They like to hear our side of the story and the way we live.
We, on the other hand, learn from some things from them that we couldn’t learn elsewhere. This is perhaps the best way to get to know the lifestyle of wealthier people and see how their families function. It’s an experience that few have. We try to be at their service all the time and do our best. The guest should never see that we are, for example, tired or in a bad mood,” concluded Brigita.
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