The weather has been strange this season - everyone is saying so. Brindisi has been a bit of an exception, though. For the past few days, Brindisi weather has been good but everywhere around has been having rain, thunderstorms and strong winds.
We need to go to Montenegro. Firstly to keep to our planned schedule, secondly to get us out of the Schengen visa area and thirdly to get the boat out of the EU. The Schengen visa area, which allows EU nationals to work freely in other EU countries, restricts non-EU residents to 90 days out of any 180 in the EU. So on longer trips like this we have to balance the days we spend in the EU against days we spend outside it. The outside options are Croatia and Montenegro (which is also out of the EU).
Montenegro is a small country on the Adriatic coast between Albania to the south and Croatia to the north.. It’s about 100 miles from Brindisi to the nearest ports in Montenegro, so this has to be an overnight trip.
But, before I talk about the trip, a final note on Brindisi. Brindisi is an ancient town that has been in existence for thousands of years. It has a great natural harbor that was used by the Romans. Indeed Brindisi is the end of the Appian Way, the Roman road (started in 312 BC) that runs 350 miles all the way from Rome.
Nowadays, Brindisi is a dusty, industrial, typically southern Italian town that mixes elegant buildings from a couple of centuries ago with pretty ugly modern construction.
Planning an overnight involves making sure that the weather is not likely to deteriorate especially when it is dark. We tend to be cautious when it’s just the two of us and motor-sail the night hours to avoid too much work with limited visibility. This time we have just one weather window - getting out of Brindisi before it finally gets its share of bad weather and getting to Montenegro just before it gets hit by another batch of storms coming down the Adriatic. The forecast says we will make it most of the way across before the winds pick up a little (but still within the bounds of comfort).
This time the forecast was perfect. We left about 2:00pm (in order to arrive off the Montenegrin coast at daylight) and, after an hour with the motor, we sailed at 7 knots for about anotherfive hours until it was getting dark. We motor-sailed the rest of the way. The winds did pick up as predicted to about 15-20 knots in the latter part of the night but, apart from Lori being a bit tired, we were fine. It is always good to get to a coast when it is light because fishing boats tend to be out in the pre-dawn and it can sometimes be difficult to thread your way through the boats even with radar to help.
Our original planned destination was Budva where we had spent a great few days last year. However, the strange weather meant that the wind (and the predicted winds over the next few days) were coming from the south - not a good direction for the berthing there. So we changed plans and I sailed about 20 miles up the coast to Tivat (where we were planning to go anyway).
Tivat is a very sophisticated modern marina development targeted at super-yachts. I’ve not said much about these but they are becoming very common in the Mediterranean. These boats can be enormous (we’ve seen them up to 150 meters long), Typically they can be in the 40 - 60 meter range.
While many are private, quite a few are chartered on a weekly basis (think $150,000 per week and, yes, that's the right number of zeros). They are so large that they don’t fit into many of the little places (especially in Greece) and they tend to have to anchor off or limit their ports to ones large enough to accommodate them. We’ve seen many where the people don’t get off in the evening. They eat meals (prepared by their chef) on board and never really get to enjoy the local sights and specialities. We don’t get it. A lot of it seems just to be an aggressive demonstration of conspicuous wealth - not pretty.
It was windy (10 - 15knots) when we parked and we had a bit of a mixed bag with the wind blowing off the customs quay (tricky to park; easy to leave) and then snugging up quite well tucked away in a corner of the marina next to another American boat. We’ll stay here for a couple of days - maybe renting a car to go off into the hinterland on Friday. I will get my haircut (ending my English sheepdog look) and Lori will get a facial.
"I think I need a haircut. Can you help?"
"That's better!!!"