Between cooking classes at the monastery, and showing off my ravioli tray before a fabulous dinner with AJ & Jen, pasta was on my mind. I know it’s easy to find dry stuff in the stores, but it really is easy to make on board. I just have to remember to mix a single egg with however much flour the situation calls for, knead it a bit and then let it rest before dinner that night. Perfect for two. This time I had a pile of broccoli, some leftover rotisserie chicken, lemon, and parm. Yum.

We love the big social gatherings, but it’s nice to slow the pace and have a quieter visit as well. New friend Virginia had invited us for lunch at her new digs just out of the main part of town.

She had lucked out on a small apartment with the most amazing view of the bay, and delightful landlords. We lazed the afternoon away with rose wine, zucchini fritters, and the most delicious tomato tart.

Of course I spent half the time watching new construction going on near by….no sense of OSHA here. No hard hats, no safety tethers, walking around on joists four stories up!

And in true Montenegrin fashion, Virginia’s landlord came out as we were leaving. Tom, a former warship engineer (I think every man in Boka Bay served on a warship in the 70s-90s), was retired with enough land to have a few apartments attached to his house. More importantly he grew an amazing assortment of crops, had chickens and pigs, and made his own wine and raki (which of course we had to sample). I will never get tired of Montenegrin hospitality.

I really had not expected to get hooked on cold water immersion, but the small group of friends that kept it up made it worth the effort. I particularly love the fact that Karin re-named it Ocean Spa Day.

Karin, Jen and I had one final day to enjoy the water and each others company, before I spotted my arch nemesis the next morning.

And of course, Blackie the cat was there to say goodbye as well, guarding his beach and keeping us company.

What I’m excited to try next is free diving. We knew that Jen was a certified scuba instructor, but I had no idea that she was a free diving instructor as well. In just an hour of classroom instruction of breathing technique, I was able to go from 30 seconds to 1 minute 30 seconds of holding my breath. I have to admit this is something that I won’t be pursuing in depth till we’re in warmer water, but I can’t wait to start the breathing practice! All these incredible new skills I had no idea I would pick up this winter.

Some thoughts about driving in Montenegro:

• The lines in the middle of the road are merely a suggestion.
• The roads are rarely wide enough for two cars, much less a truck or bus.
• Montenegrins know no fear of heights and many roads are at the edge of cliffs, and, if you’re lucky, they might have guard rails.
• Locals obviously know the roads better, but are more than likely to pass on blind curves, leading to near heart attacks on the part of unsuspecting foreigners like ourselves.

With all that said, I did finally get comfortable enough driving around to tackle the Serpentine Road from Kotor to Cetinje. 8.3 kilometers with 30 hairpin turns. As described on one website: “This narrow road can be treacherous. With inward-leaning concrete barriers on one side and jagged rock on the other, multiple vehicles may have to reverse their way back up the road when meeting a bus or construction vehicle coming the other way.” I thought we were going up early enough in the season, and early enough in the day to avoid such traffic, but within minutes I found myself backing down a road to let a truck through (impatient, but friendly enough). While pulled over and admiring the view, we watched one poor cement truck driver have to back up three times to let oncoming traffic come through.

P.S. I highly recommend the Citroën C3 Aircross. It looks like a bloated Mini Cooper, but it sat low to the ground, handled well, and comfortably sat four. Woohoo!

It took two weeks of driving in Montenegro for me to get up the courage to drive the serpentine road from Kotor to Cetijne. It’s described as: “This narrow switchback road can be treacherous. With inward-leaning concrete barriers on one side and jagged rock on the other….” What’s not to fear??? This was the original route between the two cities, and is still the shortest one (the other being a long windy drive around Budva and up into the mountains). Trip was game, and fellow cruisers Kathy and Neal came along for the day.

We were warned to go early in the day to avoid as many trucks and other vehicles. The road is 36+ km with 30 hairpin switchbacks that was once an old caravan road built during Roman times.

Of course, within minutes of being on the road we were faced with a narrow passage and an oncoming truck. I put the car into reverse and backed my way down to a spot where I could pull over to let the truck pass. With a honk and a wave, he inched past us and we were on the move again.

We pulled over every few turns or so to admire the view as things got steeper and steeper.

At one point we watched a poor cement truck have to back up not once but three times to let traffic through.

We stopped at one point at a bar set out over the edge. We enjoyed a quick drink, took a bunch of photos and videos, and were on our way again.

We had certainly picked the right day, as the views were breathtaking – as we climbed higher we could see more and more of the Bay of Kotor, the Bay of Tivat, and eventually the Adriatic as well. It was a drive well worth it!

Bar is on the southern edge of the coast of Montenegro, and we had sailed by it last season on our way to Tivat. Stari Bar (the old town), is actually 5 km out of town up in the hills. Due to wars and earthquakes, much of the old town is in ruins (and the new town of Bar was established). With much rebuilding though, people have slowly moved back and it is still magnificent to visit.

As with so many other towns in Montenegro, it saw Illyrian, Roman, Venetian, Slav, Hungarian, and Ottoman rule throughout the centuries.

The site includes the fortress at the very top, multiple churches (which have had far more restoration than the other buildings), a museum containing historical artifacts from the town, and an original Ottoman aqueduct.

We wandered the ruins for a few hours and simply enjoyed the vistas.

With all that walking, we were thirsty and hungry, and stopped at one of the popular new restaurants on the outside edge of the ruins. I immediately took to a pomegranate beer (beer mixed with pomegranate juice), which pretty much tasted like a shandy.

For lunch we opted for a Turkish veggie sampler to share. Roasted eggplant with yogurt, baked beans, braised peppers, herbed rice, it was all quite tasty.

To finish out the day, we drove over to visit the Stara Maslina, one of the world’s oldest olive trees. Now preserved in a suburb of Bar, the tree is 10 meters in diameter, and believed to be 2,240 years old.

It was a beautiful day, we had the car (and didn’t want to waste it), we had no plans, so we drove up to yet another Austro-Hungarian fort. Fort Vrmac is located on the ridge between Tivat and Kotor, and was only a 20 minute drive from the marina.

We started driving up to one of the cute little villages in the hills, hoping to drive the ridge to the fort, but were quickly stymied by the rough track (our car was good, but it was not a four-wheel drive quad bike), and drove back to town, then out the more direct route.

Fort Vrmac was established in 1860, came under fire from local Montenegrins in WWI, and later used by the Yugoslavs before being abandoned. It was highly strategic in it’s ability to see nearly every part of Boka Bay (including both Tivat and Kotor), but was still vulnerable to attacks from the Lovcen Peak.

The fort is in remarkable shape, and Trip was the first one brave enough to head inside. After dodging a couple of bats and walking around plummeting holes in the ground, we climbed out to the roof for a spectacular view of the bay.

While waiting for Trip to come back out, I heard the tinkle of a bell and knew that it wasn’t time for church….only moments later and a whole herd of goats passed through for my viewing pleasure.

It’s that time of year. Everyone talks about leaving, but someone has to be first. We were walking through the opposite side of the marina, and happened to come across Sande & Mike on s/v Square One, heading out for Croatia.

Cruising friendships form quickly and intensely as we know we only have a short time together and we don’t know when (or if) we are going to meet up in person again. So goodbyes tend to be tough. Happily, we think we may see these two again, as they’ll be sailing back down through Croatia as we head north, and I’m notorious for stalking all our new sailing friends. Happily, we hope to see most of this wonderful Porto Montenegro cruising community somewhere sometime.

From the moment we got to Porto Montenegro, we had wanted to visit the Naval Heritage Museum, particularly to have a chance to get inside a vintage Yugoslav submarine. The museum had been closed all winter, and then we finally got word that they had reopened.The director, Katarina, met us at the door, and proceeded to give us a personal tour of the entire museum.

The museum itself sits on the site of the Arsenal shipyard, first built in 1889 by the Austro-Hungarians to increase their access to the Med. The original synchro lift and shed are still in place, and the museum has collected both small and large pieces to display.

We started inside the museum. Aside from the tools and photos, three things caught our eye. The first was the scuba gear used by teams to go down and fix fuselages. The combined gear plus weight belts weighed up to 70 kg – the weight of a man himself!

The next were original submersibles. Built in the late 60s to early 70s, these machines could go to a depth of 60 meters at 6 knots and drop a bomb. Pretty potent in those days.

Next to the mine-dropper was what Katarina described as the original underwater drone – a early minesweeper.

After walking around the displays, we headed across to tour an original Heroj P-821. This particular submarine had been built in Croatia, but was representative of the types built and serviced in Tivat. At one point, all of the most talented marine engineers in Eastern Europe may have worked in this yard. (Earlier this spring, we met Gabriel, the former head engineer of the naval yard, who now has his own metal shop does fabrication and tooling at the age of 83.)

The 50 meter submarine was built in 1968, manned by a crew of 28, and had both electric and diesel engines. She could reach a depth of 210 meters comfortably. Armed with missiles, one of the four tubes was always left empty, as the tube could be used by all but one of the crew (sacrificial) to escape to the surface with dive gear if the sub was compromised.

We are not sure if this story was true or not, but Katarina was recently told (by someone who participated in the event), that during the 90’s, when Yugoslavia was under attack by NATO air raids, they wanted to hide the submarine. Everyone knew about the tunnels in Boka Bay (that we had visited ourselves by foot and by boat), so they sunk the sub in Kotor Bay for a month. The reasoning was that Kotor was already designated as a UNESCO world heritage site and they figured no bombing would occur then. Not sure if the story is true or not, but it certainly sounds interesting.