Porto Montenegro – Friday 22 June 2018

So it was up at 6:30 and off the berth at 7:30.  The weather seemed mild with only light winds.  We made our way to Gruz, being the port of entry for Dubrovnik to sign out of the country.  I was able to get through to the customs office on the VHF and they told us where to moor up on the customs quay and even had someone there to take our lines.  But then we saw there was a huge queue of people, cars and lorries all waiting for clearance. At one stage we were told it might take 2 hours for them to get to us.  On hearing this we thought maybe we would be better to go on to Cavtat and check out there.  But when Richard went to the office to say we were thinking about that they said that today is a national holiday in Croatia and Cavtat might well be closed!

So we sat it out and in the end the delay was only just over an hour.  But that did mean our journey to Montenegro was going to finish quite a bit later than we hoped.  

The weather forecast was for southerly winds of about force 4.  Richard thought that would be alright as we were going east south east. But with our luck that was not to be.  It was a force 4 on the nose with a lumpy sea all the way to the bay of Kotor.  Nothing for it but to motor into it, slowing us down a lot.  We finally got to Porto Montenegro at about 5:30 and moored up on the customs pontoon to sign in. But what with all that it was 8pm by the time we were in our berth.  We came here because it is easy to check in as they have all the facilities right here in the marina and because the weather forecast was for very strong winds over night and we wanted to be tucked up safe in case of that.

So far however, it is dead calm. We are in the far end of the marina, but they have a shuttle.  Anyway if the weather is OK we will set off fairly early tomorrow to go to Kotor.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Venice - Thursday 24 May 2018

Well, we are still here in Venice and it doesn’t look like we will be able to leave before Sunday (though Saturday is still a possibility).  The weather has been hot and sunny and is getting to me. I fell asleep twice today! The saga of the works goes on.  We waited most of the morning for anyone to turn up and then walked the ½ mile to the office to find out what was happening when we were told the engineer and rigger were on the way to the boat.  So Richard rushed back to the boat and I loaded up the Times on my ipad. The only internet here is in the hotel so we have to come down to do anything. The upshot is that the water pump has to be replaced for a less powerful one.  The engineer is coming to do that tomorrow morning. Will we be charged for this twice?!  We can see another argument looming. The rigging in another problem.  After he put the main up Richard found that he could not rig the reefing lines.  We have had problems with them and had asked for that to be loo
Read more

Shengjin (Albania) – Thursday 28 June 2018

Image
Well our plans to check out of Montenegro didn’t quite go to plan.     We woke up to the alarm at 6am and went to deal with customs and the immigration police at about 6:45.     The customs office appeared to be closed, but when they heard us at the door they opened it and took our piece of paper from the Harbour Master.   However when we got to the police they told us they do not open until 7am and we had to bring the boat around to them.     By the time we did all this it was about 8am before we left Bar harbour.     The weather forecast was better but there were still problems.  The wind has dropped but there is nearly a metre swell in the sea.  I took a pill before we set out in the light of this.  With the sea state and the late start we abandoned the plan to go straight to Durres and headed to Shengjin instead.  In fact the journey was not that bad.  The sea settled down after a couple of hours.  The main problem is that it became very cloudy and cold. I had to put on long t
Read more

Luke Polace, Mljet – Tuesday 19 June 2018

Image
Well we have had another day that hasn’t gone to plan.     I never got though to Korcula marina. So we had to make some decisions.   The weather forecast for going back to Korcula was bad.     There were predicted to be 20 knot winds on the nose.     Also going to Korcula would mean going north when we want to go south.     So for all those reasons we gave up on that idea and decided it would be best to make our way to Dubrovnik where Jonnie had the details of an engineer who fixed his bow thruster earlier in the season.     So first Jonnie spoke to the engineer who said he could help us if we contacted him when we got to Dubrovnik. Then we made reservations to go into Dubrovnik marina on Wednesday and Thursday.  So today we would go back to our original plan of going to the island of Mljet where there is supposed to be a lovely bay.  There we could go on a restaurant pontoon if not too crowded or windy so we could manoever without hitting anything, or go on a mooring buoy or anch
Read more