Destinations

"It doesn’t get much better than this!" Captain Franko Papic has been asked by Saga to design a very personal cruise for guests to a place very close to his heart. The guitar-loving father of two shares his passion for Croatia.

“We would wait on the beach for him to come home”

I’m from a small community and come from a family of seafarers – my great grandfather was a captain, my grandfather was a chief engineer and my father was a captain for ferries and cargo ships. My dad would go away to sea for six months at a time.

My mum, my little sister and I pretty much lived on the beach and we would wave him off. It was hard but we accepted it and had to live with it. We would be sad at first but would get used to it. We would wait on the beach for him to come home.

“I was seasick for a few days”

It sounds a bit strange but I didn’t plan on being at sea, I was never pushed into it despite the family tradition. My parents told me I could do whatever I wanted. But my nearest school was a nautical college and so at 14 I started to learn about careers at sea. I knew I wasn’t a nine to five guy. At 16 I was in a band – I love guitar – but in the summer I had nothing to do and couldn’t get any gigs so I managed to get a job on a boat and it was my first job at sea. It was really exciting being on board and looking back at the bay rather than when it was the other way round as a child waving goodbye to my dad. I was seasick for a few days though! And that’s how it started and now I’m captain. My dad told me he was proud of me.