With COVID, travelling to Croatia, to inspect a yacht for purchase is a challenge in itself. This is where Nick’s services truly stand out.

Not being a broker, Nick is an impartial intermediary for your search. He has had sailing experience in a wide range of yachts for a wide range of purposes.

He also has contacts within the industry and can find out more than meets the eye with information from locals, usually inaccessible. He knows how Croatians manage the buy and sell process, saving you a whole lot of time and frustration.

With over 20 years of experience in the yachting industry combined with solid reputation and high degree of professionalism, Nick offers a select range of services to those looking to purchase a yacht in Europe.

Kiwi born and raised, Nick taught himself how to sail, invested in his own yacht and began to teach sailing in the city of Wellington, famous for its wild windy weather. This provided the perfect environment for Nick to hone his skills, instilling in him a love a strong southerly winds and the heel that comes with the confidence to push a sailing boat in that kind of weather.

Working in the Caribbean aboard mono-hulls and catamarans proved another amazing adventure which ultimately led Nick and his now wife Mahina to expand their sailing experience from the South Pacific Ocean and the Tasman Sea off the coasts of New Zealand and Australia out into the Yellow sea in China and passages through the North Atlantic Ocean, Mediterranean, Tyrrhenian and Adriatic Seas.

Having sailed as a cruiser, racer, instructor and providing premium family holidays for others, both Nick and Mahina understand the different needs of different sailors for different yachts and are here to help you make the best investment decision for your chosen yachting lifestyle and budget.

Nick was great in helping me to find a yacht for purchase in Croatia while I was in the USA. Because he knows a lot of the charter companies here, he was also able to get the inside story on some of the yachts. Once we had a short list, we traveled to Croatia to check them out in person.

I ended up buying a boat that they had found - a great option that was within my price range and perfect for my needs. Once I bought it, I took lessons from him to help get me started. I really valued that Nick is not a broker and does not take commission on the deal, so his only motivation was to help me find the right boat. All in all a great experience.

I would thoroughly recommend having the 45D team help with any boat purchase you are considering in Croatia.

We trusted Nick to reassure us we weren’t buying someone else’s problem, and to identify any obvious issues on the water. We also asked him to join us for a three/four-day boat familiarisation. Thank goodness we did. Nick changed our overwhelming first day experience from not knowing a thing about the boat’s systems to being confident enough to immediately go out on our own for a three-day sail. He gave us a task list to do before he arrived and on arrival he methodically worked through every system and gadget on the boat in the down time between sailing, anchoring, picking up moorings, close quarters berthing and much more. We even got to weather it out in 60 knot winds, both at anchor and sailing to calmer waters. Nick was perfectly calm, patient, enthusiastic, challenging at the right times, knowledgeable, organised and a skilled sailor. We would have loved the opportunity to learn more from him but he was off on his next adventure to the Caribbean the next day!

This was my first time buying a boat so I was looking for "me" on the ground, someone to go through the highlight reels and check out each of the boats. So if I had to fly out once to pick out of the top three maybe. The value of having that person there with the experience would far outweigh the cost.

From my first contact with Nick and his team at 45 Degrees Sailing we were on the same page. After looking for over a year in US, within a couple of months with Nick we went from 20-30 yachts, narrowing it down to 2-3 listings. Nick's input on that was fantastic. He was very thorough, very concise,

I have found a lot of people are afraid to steer someone the wrong way. Nick wasn't like that at all. He was very straightforward and said "I've seen this on another boat, stay away from it". That was superstar status for me because ultimately time is money!

I can't recommend Nick and his team enough.

Nick Hathaway
Yacht Consultant Croatia

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