Author: Nicole (Page 13 of 44)

This part of the eastern Mediterranean is slowly becoming famous for their wines. Fellow cruiser George had mentioned a winery up in the hills behind Herceg Novi, but we never got around to exploring it when we were anchored there. I happened to google it and was able to make a reservation for the next day, as the weather looked fabulous and we had a car at our disposal.

The winery was founded by locals who lived abroad in London and developed a taste for old world wines. They came home, bought the land, and planted old world grapes, just enough to provide wine for friends and family. The land was particularly well suited – on the side of a hill with plenty of sun (records in the local museum showed that vineyards had existed there since the 1300’s).

It was a success and Savina wines were born. The wines did so well that they were able to open as a commercial winery, though they have kept production small and export nothing further than Dubrovnik in neighboring Croatia. Several years ago the local monastery allowed them to plant more vines, and now the monastery has wine to consume and sell. (Interesting fact: Because the monastery is Orthodox, the labels for the wines sold there are custom printed in the Cyrillic alphabet).

Trip isn’t normally a fan of white wines, but the Chardonnay (French, lightly oaked, no butter) was delightful. Our absolute favorite, though, was their Cabernet Sauvignon, and at $20 a bottle we can splurge every once in a while.

Jenny and AJ, other cruisers in the marina who we recently met, happened to pass by and joined us for the tasting. We tortured the winery’s cat by playing with him and petting him, but denying him a taste of our charcuterie board.

After basking in the sun with a spectacular view of the bay, good wine and good company, it was time to head back. To save an hours drive along the water, for 4€ we boarded a car ferry that took us across in less than 5 minutes!

The bay here is most famously known for Tivat (home of the fabulous Porto Montenegro) and Kotor (with its fortress walls and stone-lined old town). We rented a car to get out and see a little bit more of the bay and we were not disappointed.

Perast was one of our main goals. Though the town is located right on the bay, there’s nowhere close to anchor and it’s a bit of a walk from Risan, so we never explored it when we were sailing up here. It was a long drive as there’s only one road around the bay and speed is limited to 50 kph max. However, I was remembering how to drive stick shift after 8 years and the local drivers are a bit unpredictable, so I was happy to take it slow.

For a town that can be walked through in under an hour, it packs a punch with history. Settled in Neolithic times and formally founded by the Illyrians, it came into its own courtesy of protection from and free trade with Venice in the 18th century. The fortress walls that had been constructed in the 1300s were now joined by twenty baroque palaces and seventeen churches (a few of each remain, the palaces now high end resorts or restaurants).

There are three statues of famous locals in the town center. One of them was Trip’s namesake, it turns out he was a famous local painter. Trip was a bit disappointed that it wasn’t one of the other statues, that of Marko Martinovic, an extraordinary local ship’s captain.

Volatile is the word that comes to mind as how best to describe the weather here in Autumn. Our first month here was almost non-stop, sun-filled days (an unusual experience that all of the eastern Med was experiencing). Now, the more typical turbulent fall weather has arrived and I am so glad to be tightly tied down in our berth. Winds of up to 48 knots have blown through along with torrential bouts of rain. Lightning strikes light up the entire bay. Weather comes from multiple directions during the day so you have to be prepared. But in between the storms we have the most magical skies at dusk…..

We are not going to suffer for want of fresh fruits and veggies this winter season. I took fellow cruiser Kristy to one of the local Tivat produce markets. It’s in a dank and dark underground basement-like area, which doesn’t look nice but it means that vendors & customers can come regardless of weather conditions. They set up their goods every day except Saturday. I’ve been going to the same woman who kindly always tucks a couple of extra apples in my bag after I pay. Shopping on a daily basis isn’t a chore when these are the conditions.

We didn’t have the chance to explore the coast of Montenegro as we had to come straight into the bay of Tivat to clear-in a month ago, so we decided to hop a bus one day and head over (it would have taken a day to get there by boat, but only an hour by bus).

Budva, at 2,500 years old, is one of the oldest towns on the Adriatic coast. Founded by the Illyrians, it has undergone Greek, Roman, Serbian, Ottoman, French, Austrian, and Venetian rule, all of which are apparent in the Stari Grad (old town). Budva is actually a huge modern city, but we don’t have much use for casinos, fancy hotels, and ritzy beach bars, so we focused on the old town which is manageable in an afternoon.

The old city is right on the waters edge, surrounded by typical high stone walls and includes a citadel and a few churches. It’s like a maze wandering through the streets. We were very much reminded of Kotor, though hipsters have definitely moved into Budva, judging by the trendy little shops.

Though there were plenty of tourists, we pretty much had the citadel and the local history museum to ourselves . It’s evident that the season is coming to a close, and we were lucky not to be fighting the crowds.

Budva suffered a lot of damage in 1979 from an earthquake, but you wouldn’t know it from the detailed rebuilding that preserved the original structures.

We love the Buddha Bar music collections, but have never actually been to one of the bars in person. Little did we know Porto Montenegro has their own right next to the marina. I can only imagine how crowded this place must be during the summer, but at the end of the season the place was nearly empty and we had it all to ourselves for a couple of gin & tonics at the end of the day.

When we first came into the marina, a marinero helped us pick up the slime lines that run from cleats on our stern to chains and anchor points on the sea bed. He also helped us tie off our bow to cleats on the dock. That, combined with plenty of fenders on either side of us, should lock us into position for the season. However, a week later with moderate gusts into the 20’s one night, the boat was moving back and forth way too much for our liking. Knowing that Montenegro routinely experiences much higher winds in the form of the ‘bora’ that blows from the north/northeast, we needed a tighter tie down.

Trip contacted the office and two marineros came immediately. They used our winches to get even more of the slime lines out of the water. They used a trick of standing on the bow lines to make the boat slide forward, and then quickly take in the slack. Trip added chafe guard and snubbers to protect the lines. We also added spring lines.

We slept through the next storm (gusts in the 30s, maybe 40s), snug as a bug this time.

We were also happy to later learn how responsive the marineros are. The marina had already sent out an email blast asking boat owners to take precautions for the upcoming storm. Trip notified them of a neighbors boat that was swinging in the wind (the owner had flown back to the UK), and they came over immediately to better secure the boat. Things like that make me much more confident about leaving the boat this winter.

We are in a part of the world that many friends and family still say ‘Where??’, and go look it up on Google maps. But one of them happened to stop here on a cruise up the Adriatic Sea! Trip’s cousin Britt and friends made a stop in Kotor (which is only a ten minute drive from here). We took a bus over while they were doing a walking tour of the old town, and then we all piled in taxis so that they could see Tivat. We had a fabulous lunch on the waterfront, strolled past the mega yachts in the marina, showed them Kalyra, and then just sat and relaxed with cocktails. It was much too short a visit, but I love that the Salander family keeps finding us in some of the more uncommon places in the world (Mark [Britt’s brother] and his wife Minda were with us a year ago in the Azores – another place that invites ‘Where??’).

One of the things that really attracted us to Porto Montenegro was the vibrant winter live aboard group. Though we don’t spend the entire winter on the boat, we stay well into November and come back in March to explore more. The entire winter crowd isn’t even here yet, but we’ve been slowly meeting new neighbors.

We’ve got both a FaceBook group and a WhatsApp group for letting each other know about logistics and events. One of those important events is Curry Night. Every Wednesday night, the local cruisers message a local Indian restaurant their orders, and then we all show up for dinner. The inaugural event for the season had more than 30 people turn up! (We were told the final event last year had 120 people.). And the best part was that Trip, who historically has had a bad reaction to curry, can now eat Indian food with no ill effects!

It’s October and we’re settled for the winter! It’s become quite difficult to find a winter berth in the Med, for a few reasons: We have to cope with Schengen rules (90 days in, and 90 days out of most EU countries). That leaves limited places where we can winter the boat and feel free to stay on board. In the past, Croatia, Turkey, Montenegro, Tunisia, Albania were all options in the eastern Med. However, Brexit meant that British boats are no longer free to winter in Schengen waters and have increased the competition for slots in these limited places. Croatia entered Schengen this year and took themselves out of the running. Albania simply doesn’t have the infrastructure for what I consider a safe and comfortable winter experience (yet – it’ll be there in a few years). Demand for Turkey has skyrocketed (Brexit, Russian boats no longer permitted in the EU with the war, inflation, etc) and prices are now exorbitant. That left us with Tunisia and Montenegro. By chance, last winter (January 2023), Trip and I came across two videos and blogs from cruisers staying in Porto Montenegro. We had never heard of the place, and it was wildly more expensive than what we would normally pay (with far more upscale services than we would use). But as we began researching our options we realized: a) Montenegro made the most sense given our sailing plans, b) The history, ancient cities, and landscapes were amazing, and c) Options were running out fast due to demand! As it was we booked our berth back in February and there were only two berths left (we would have normally done so mid-summer with far less pressure). Porto Montenegro it was.

We’ve never stayed in a luxury mega yacht marina, and probably never will again, so we are making the most of it! We got a special offer of; pay-for-6 months, get-one-month-free, so our contract started October 1. We came in a few days later because we didn’t know if there would be a rush, and the weather was so nice why not stay out at anchor. (And maybe I calculated how many clean clothes we had left before I needed to do laundry and I’m tired of doing wash by hand!).

Med-mooring would be a new thing for us. We use marinas infrequently, and in the past we’ve always had a side pontoon or finger dock to tie onto. With med-mooring, you back into a slip, tie off your stern on either side to the dock, and take ‘slime lines’ (named for the marine growth as they sit under the surface many a day) that run parallel to your boat, and tie them off at your bow (they are attached to a heavy chain running parallel to the dock). We have too much COTB (crap on the back) like our low davits, solar panel, wind vane, so we need to go in bow first.

A marinero (generic term for a boat handler within a marina) guided us in by dinghy (we had also already been round to the marina office and studied the map of the docks to know exactly where we would be going). We passed by mega yachts (more on that later) and what I call the mini-megas (the big boats wanting to be mega yachts but not quite qualifying – still enormous to us).

Eventually we turned into our row and came into the pontoon. Tying off the bow was easy enough, hand the lines to the marinero on the dock and he wraps them around the cleat and hands them back (so you can control all aspects of securing the boat from the boat). The slime lines were a little trickier. The smell and feel of the slime was awful (I had been warned to wear gloves but forgot). And we just simply couldn’t get the boat straight in the slip, she was sitting cock-eyed. We tugged and tugged and finally gave up, she was tight and we were locked in. We were home for the winter.