The St Anthony Channel, the narrow seaway you cross on day one, is guarded by the fortress of St Nicholas — a 16th-century stone giant built to keep enemies out of Šibenik. Your charter slips through it on the way to the islands, past walls older than most navies. That first passage sets the tone for the whole week.

Kornati National Park is a maze of 89 islands, islets and reefs — and not one of them has a road. You do not visit Kornati, you anchor in it, swim off the transom and watch the sun drop behind bare limestone. From Šibenik it is a single overnight hop, and it is the whole itinerary.

The word “marina” comes from the Latin for mooring, but Croatian sailors will tell you the real secret is the wind: the maestral arrives almost like clockwork after lunch, gives you four hours of perfect sailing, then dies at sunset. Plan your hops around it and you look like a genius on your own charter.

Zlarin, one of the islands a short hop from Šibenik, is famous for coral — divers have harvested red coral in these waters for centuries. Your charter can anchor off it in the morning, swim in water clear enough to see the bottom, and be somewhere else entirely by dinner. That is the whole point of a week on your own boat.

A solar array on a charter boat is not a gadget — it is the reason the anchorage stays quiet at night. No generator, no fumes, no hum under your cabin. Just the water lapping the hull and the stars over the Kornati. That is what you are really booking.