Few tourists in Croatia
The owner seemed a little surprised by the quick help, as he had hoped, but did not necessarily expect SeaHelp to be continuously active among the few tourists on site. For him, he said, it was the second time he had had to call on SeaHelp help. An unmistakable sign of the benefits of membership.
Trouble-free travel to Dalmatia
His trip to Croatia sounded at least as interesting. “We got into the car spontaneously on Thursday after we had heard that the borders were open. Getting into Croatia was really no problem. At the German-Austrian border, traffic was reduced to one lane, the Germans didn’t check at all when leaving the country, the Austrians looked into the car once and waved us through.
Relaxed controls at the border
At the Austrian-Slovenian border, they went into more detail. Especially the Slovenian border guards had their boat papers shown to them, probably to make sure that the holidaymakers really wanted to use Slovenia only for transit. It seems to have gotten around among the Slovenian border guards that Germans are only allowed to enter Slovenia for a good reason such as the possession of a real estate or a boat, a booked charter trip or a booked hotel or apartment. But then it went on without problems on Slovenian roads.
Very friendly, but certainly the controls at the Slovenian-Croatian border were carried out. The border officials stationed there obviously scanned the passports of all four travellers, took a quick look at the boat papers and asked again where they were going. After also leaving their mobile phone number, they could cross the border.
Only one restaurant in Vodice open
All in all, the boat owner took the situation calmly, because he would have expected a lot more obstacles and stay at the borders. But now he can enjoy it all the more, because hardly any tourists have arrived in the Vodice region at the moment. “Only one restaurant is open in Vodice at the moment,” says the skipper, who knows the area very well.
Exemplary precautions in the marinas
And he praises the precautions, at least in the marinas. “When you enter the marina, you are first measured for fever, then you are advised to observe the rules of distance,” he continues. Everything here is currently done in compliance with the imposed measures to prevent infection, he concludes.
But he is particularly pleased that Dalmatia is showing its very different side in times of the Corona pandemic: With the exception of a few locals, there is virtually no shipping traffic on the Adriatic and also considerably less traffic on the roads. “It’s still like deep winter, but with summery temperatures.” But that will obviously change at Whitsun.
SeaHelp expects more missions at Whitsun
By the way: Sea-Help also maintained the operational readiness of all bases during the entire Corona period and did not dismiss a single employee or send them on short-time work. They were also active for the members on request. The last two months proved to be much quieter than in the comparable period of the last few years, but SeaHelp is now expecting a significant increase in the number of missions, especially at Whitsun, because experience from previous years has shown that missions do not become less frequent due to a later start to the season, but are more concentrated. This is in the nature of things: Mistakes that developed insidiously during winter storage, such as in this case the decreasing performance of the batteries or, for example, dirty fuel filters, do not suddenly disappear, but rather occur later.
