Sail the Venetian coast of Croatia

Rain battered on the deck a couple of feet above my head in tandem with thunder and ominously tolling church bells, while the Adriatic slapped against the hull a few inches from my pillow. Good morning, Croatia.

I'd never sullied a pair of deck shoes by actually treading on a deck before, so this wasn't a great start to a week's learning-to-sail break. But Croatia is made for sailing, late-season storms aside. From Dubrovnik past Split, more than 1,000 islands stretch along an Italianate coastline where Venetian rule has left an imprint on every white-walled, rose-tiled town, there's no tide to complicate things and the weather is actually damn fine for most of the year.

By the time the sun finally broke through on the first day, sailing was out, but a walk into the nearby town of Murter was a good landlubber's alternative. A huge Cold War statue of a hero worker ushered us into a tiny town square where local kids buzzed by on mopeds and the beer was cold and cheap.

Around noon the next day, our skipper, Gary Bird, guided his nervous trio of novices - yours truly, Clapham gal Claire and jolly Ruth from Hull - as we slipped our moorings and gingerly guided our 40-footer, Stella, into a choppy Adriatic.

Gary was wiry and weatherbeaten enough to have come straight from Seafarers Central Casting, but even he couldn't defy recalcitrant waves and bugger-all wind as we quickly resorted to engine power to chug up the side of Murter island, getting used to the strangely exhilarating feeling of being alone on a slate-grey sea, while Gary whipped up some pasta below on a ship's cooker that would have had Delia weeping as it pivoted through mad angles with each wave we hit.

But as the wind veered more favourably and the sun began to break through after lunch, Gary started getting crazy ideas - like hoisting the mainsail and giving me the helm: "Feel the wind on your cheek, and watch the sails," he said, as the boat gradually came alive on what I'd just learned from my Sailing-For-Dummies manual was a close-haul. I tried to feel that wind but also sneaked constant glances up at the wind-direction indicator on top of the mast. "Mind that island," said Gary suddenly, just to remind me there was more to sailing than wind.

The days soon took on a pattern. Wake up about 8am (after a couple of sleepless nights, I got used to a bobbing bed), bang yourself on something in a cabin that made even the pokiest London broom cupboard feel like a loft, grab breakfast at a waterside caff, then wander round cobbled streets that could have been Umbria or Tuscany, before regrouping on board to lay out charts and decide where to go that day.

We learned on the job. After a day or two of cramming, Gary became just a prompt on the ropes and sails, intervening only if we looked like committing some yachting crime, such as dropping the boom onto someone's skull. Only the knots got the better of me, though Ruth and Claire effortlessly learned each new rope trick. I wasn't surprised one knot was called a "bollocks" - all of them were to me.

We also learned the useful skill of knowing where you were. No "you are here" arrows littered the briny, and as for GPS - pah! A modern toy for wimps. Armed with fancy compass and newly acquired nautical squints we were old-school to the core, picking out landmarks or marker buoys to plot our whereabouts, triumphantly brandishing the chart to show Cap'n Gary that Stella and her motley crew were actually on course to reach the right port before nightfall.

Dusk was the most frantic time, bringing Stella into port, watched by the old pros on shore as we hauled in and tied off sails, our nerves taut as a halyard as we set about parking our six-figure yacht among a forest of other six-figure yachts without smacking into any of them. Only then could we relax, before rushing for the hot blast of the marina showers that were bliss after the damp cramp of on-board life.

Our growing confidence at this sailing ma-larkey soon had Cap'n Gary leaving us alone on deck for hours each day while he got on with reading a novel below, blasting out Tom Jones's Sex Bomb as a soundtrack for our efforts. "But I always knew what the yacht was doing," he 'fessed up on our last, drunken night.

AT sea, it was easy to slip into yacht time, marking the day by the sun rather than a watch, while some of the tiny ports also seemed adrift, places where anyone could disappear by growing a beard and opening the sort of bar in Prvic where I watched the island's top octopus-catcher (a Big Thing round these parts) take the other fishermen to the cleaners at cards.

Only a few scars of past conflict intruded if you looked closer: bullet holes sprayed up a church tower or gouged out of the brightly coloured houses in places like Skradic. But no one seemed that keen to dwell on the ethnic violence which had ripped through Croatia a decade before. "One day we were friends, the next we were not," was about the most I got out of anyone. Now everyone wanted to let the Adriatic wash away the bad memories, to look forward and pull together. A bit like a crew, really.

Way to go

Norman Miller travelled to Croatia with Activity Holidays (01932 867418; www.activity-holidays.co.uk). One week from £515pp (based on two sharing a double cabin), including flights, transfers, light meals on board and tuition. Sailing holidays run from April to October.