Croatia

In 305 AD, the Roman emperor Diocletian retired to Split, on the Croatian Adriatic, and built a palace on the bay that he intended to last. Seventeen hundred years later, half of Split's old town still lives inside its walls. The Roman walls, the courtyards, the cathedral that started as the emperor's mausoleum: it is the most-preserved Roman imperial residence anywhere in the world, and it is the spine of any yacht charter on the Dalmatian coast.

The islands open up south of Split. Hvar comes first, a long thin island with the lavender fields its perfumiers still distil and the Pakleni anchorages off Palmižana, where most charters stop for lunch. Vis, further south and west, was a closed Yugoslav military island until 1989, which kept its harbours small and its restaurants quiet, and is the reason it remains the favourite of charter clients who have already done Hvar a few times. Korčula, where Marco Polo is said to have been born (the historians argue, but the Korčulans don't), holds a stone old town walled in 13th-century towers. Dubrovnik closes the run, with its famous walls over the Adriatic and the marble streets behind them.

The wind here is the maestral, a dry warm northwest breeze that builds in the afternoons through the summer and drops at sunset, which is why most days settle into the same easy pattern. The season runs May to October, and a one-way charter from Split to Dubrovnik, or the reverse, is the most-booked itinerary on the coast: charters pick up at either end, and the wind direction usually decides which way you sail.