looking for first time charter in europe - advice needed

[ausi1972]

First a bit about me and my family.

I am 34 years old, I now live in the West Midlands in the UK. I was born in Australia and my parents travelled a lot. My parents always had a boat (35 foot+) so we spent plenty of time at sea.
We often moved house by selling the existing house then living on the boat for several months cruising around the UK until the found somewhere they liked, then bought another house.
I have 2 brother and 2 sisters so the boat had to sleep 7, which it did very well (my dad converted it from a ships lifeboat basing his design on the Fairy Fisherman). - sure that is spelled wrong.
When I left home I kept my hand in sailing at the local dinghy sailing club (Plymouth). Then 10 years ago I moved up to the West Midlands. I again carried on sailing with a friend on his Bull 7000, racing out of Pwllheli Yacht Club in Wales for about 3 years, but now I haven't been sailing for about 4 years.
My wife has never been sailing except for a day on holiday in St Lucia when I took her out on a hobby cat, she enjoyed that extremely.
I also have a daughter aged 4 years and a son aged 1 year, neither have been on a boat before.

I now find myself itching to get back into sailing and would love to spend a holiday introducing my family into this great adventure.

I was thinking of starting with a holiday on board a charter yacht with a flotilla around Croatia or somewhere.

I have looked around the web and found that most require some form of qualification, I have never taken a formal qualification, but I am happy to do one if required, I will have to brush up my navigation skills though.

Can someone please recommend some good flotilla charter companies in Eastern Europe and advise on what qualifications I should take.
Or if someone is already qualified, intending to go on a flotilla holiday and fancies some company (My wife, 2 kids and I!), then we could get together and get a nice big boat.

PS I don't mind travelling to the USA if there are some better places.

Sorry for the long winded post but I figured it would help if you knew my circumstances.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

[katie66]

You need to be prepared to have a license for Croatia. Some of the bigger charter companies have a way to get around the requirement - and they try hard with Americans who aren't required to have a license in the US for bareboat - but coming from England be sure to check out exactly what you will need. This site goes over the details: http://www.sailing-advisor.com/saili...uirements.html
And they suggest some companies on their Croatia page - it is probably a good place to start.

[kburt]

I can highly recommend sailing holidays (http://www.sailingholidays.com) - we have just returned from our second Croatian flotilla with them. A lack of formal qualifications isn't a problem with them as they just ask for details of experience for flotilla (they might need a bit more if you want bareboat).