Stopped by the Croatian Coast Guard

Exploring marine life at a northern Croatian anchorage
(we keep them under water and don't handle them much--Z just wanted to show me for identification).

Enjoying a few lovely anchorages as we sail south through the islands. Caves are a favorite spot to snorkel!

After a quick run south through Croatia, we arrived in Cavtat to check out. According to the pilot book, you must check out before noon on Saturday, otherwise, wait until it reopens on Monday. As our weather window meant we had to leave on a Sunday, we followed the instructions and checked out just before noon on Saturday.

As the guide book says...

A storm blew through that night and we stayed up for most of it, as many of the boats around us were dragging anchor. Around 6am with just enough daylight, we left the anchorage and began our sail south. We were heading to Montenegro to take advantage of the duty-free fuel again. About 7 nautical miles from the border, we encountered a Croatian police boat. They did not hail us on the radio, but rather motioned we should follow them. We came a bit closer to hear their instructions just to be sure, and they repeated we had to follow them into the bay nearby.

After entering the  bay, they pulled up alongside and prepared to raft up. The kids and I put out all our fenders, as I did not want any damage from their bigger boat. Once secured, an officer stated that we were in violation of their law of not departing the country immediately upon clearing out. The fine ranged from 1000 kuna to 5000 kuna, but if we paid now it would only be 600 kuna.

I explained the procedure we had followed and showed them the pilot book. After a 'call to the boss', they took a photo copy of the book, checked our  boat documents, and sent us on our way. However, they also made sure to have us explain to others that this pilot book is incorrect and they will not accept this 'excuse' any longer. We have written to the Imray publisher to inform them of this, in hopes to save other sailors any issues.

While our frustration of the experience is displayed in the video, we do understand they are just doing their job. The officials were polite and professional, and we also remained the same throughout the experience.  We even had a nice chat about why we are living on a boat and shared some of our favorite travels. We enjoyed most of our time sailing around Croatia. There are over 1,000 islands and so much to see. That said, this experience left us with a bitter ending to our experience in this country. We share this in hopes of helping other sailors avoid a similar issue.