Supetar Sunset boat ride

Three hours, and one boat that belongs only to your group. This sunset boat ride leaves Split in the evening, crosses eight nautical miles of the Brač channel to Supetar and brings you back into a lit city. It is the shortest and least expensive tour we sell, and the only one on which Split itself stays in view the whole way.

Split has a lot of boats advertising sunsets, and most of them mean a loop around the harbour. This one is a crossing.

You leave from Matejuška and head south-south-east to Supetar, the largest town on Brač, with 4,325 residents at the 2021 census. The car ferry covers the same water in 50 minutes; a fast boat does it in a fraction of that, which is what leaves room for time ashore.

No Šolta, no Hvar, no Blue Cave. For an island village and dinner ashore, take the Maslinica sunset tour.

The tour lasts three hours in total, published as 19:00 to 22:00. We do not publish a minute-by-minute schedule — on a private boat the time in Supetar and the time on the water are yours to divide.

Departure from Matejuška, Split

You meet your skipper at Matejuška, a small fishing harbour just west of the Riva at the foot of Marjan, and cast off after a short safety briefing. Pick-up from your accommodation costs extra.

Split from the water

The first few minutes are the reason to take this tour rather than a table on the Riva.

When Diocletian's builders started work around 295, only one of the palace's four walls was left unfortified: the southern one, which rose straight out of the sea. It got an arcaded gallery along its upper floor and a Sea Gate plainer than the three landward gates: it was never meant to be defended. It was meant to be arrived at. The Riva now stands between that wall and the water, so the angle the building was designed for is one you can only get from a boat. The palace has been UNESCO World Heritage since November 1979, and about 3,000 people live inside its walls.

Behind it, Marjan closes the view — a protected forest park of 297.11 hectares, Telegrin at 178 metres. The pines are planted, not natural: the first Aleppo pines went in in 1852 and the hill became a forest park in 1964. Two stone churches sit in it: St Nicholas, early 13th century, and St Jerome, 15th.

Across the Brač channel

The crossing is about eight nautical miles and stays inside the channel, which is why this tour runs in conditions that would cancel a trip to Vis.

One connection is worth knowing on the way over: the white limestone in the palace walls behind you came from Brač, the island ahead of you. Romans settled Splitska, six kilometres east of Supetar, to work the quarry that supplied it.

Supetar

Supetar grew around a bay named after St Peter, and it is a working island town rather than a resort: a ferry port, a waterfront of konobas, streets that empty out by ten.

If you have half an hour, walk to the cemetery west of the harbour. Supetar produced the sculptor Ivan Rendić (1849–1932) and several gravestones beside the chapel of St Nicholas are his; next to them stands the Petrinović mausoleum, with sculpture by Toma Rosandić (1878–1958). Most guests use the time for a drink or an early dinner instead — it is your boat.

The way back, after dark

You leave Supetar as the light goes and cross back with Split ahead of you: the Riva lit along its whole length, the cathedral campanile above the palace roofline, Marjan a black mass beside it.

There is no single departure hour that works all season, because the sunset moves. In midsummer the sun is still well up in the early evening and a late departure is right; by mid-September it is already going down at that hour, and a fixed evening slot would mean crossing in the dark with no sunset in it. For those dates we move the departure earlier.

Tell us your date when you book and we set the time against the sunset for it.

We run three evening tours and they are not variations on one product.

One free evening, take this one. A romantic dinner, Maslinica. A night out, Hvar.

It is a short tour with a real crossing in the middle, not a harbour cruise. If you are travelling with a toddler, or you came to swim, book a half-day tour instead — Lovrečina and Supetar covers the same town by day, with a beach added.

A light jacket or windbreaker — the channel is cooler after sunset than the Riva is, in any month. Beyond that, a camera and cash or a card for dinner in Supetar. Water, safety equipment and insurance are on board. Want to add a sea scooter and SUP to your day? These can be arranged as an extra.

Still deciding which islands to fit into your week? Our guide to sunset boat rides in Croatia covers the options.