Cruising Albania and Montenegro

What a busy couple of months we have had in this spectacular part of the world. We have had a lot of fun with old and new friends, exploring new places and immersing ourselves in different foods and cultures. We feel very blessed to be able to live this life, despite the occasional drama which we will explain later.

The many sources of on-line information and cruisers’ forums, help us make informed decisions of our next passages. For our weather forecasting, we mainly use Windy, or Predict Wind to see what to expect over the next week, and we have found these to be pretty accurate. However no matter how careful we are, nature can sometimes have other ideas.

We are now leaving Greece to go explore Albania, a small country on the Balkan peninsula and not one of the Schengen countries. We had perfect conditions to sail the 20nm sail from Corfu to Sarande, where we met with our agent, Jelja, who had prepared all our documents ready for checking in to Albania. The town was very clean with all the necessary services and with the dinghy dock right at the Police and Customs offices, we felt very secure.

There were several of our friends already in the anchorage, so we had some catching up and storytelling for the next few nights. They did warn us that the pirate ships that we see lined up along the shore, all come alive at night with lights and loud disco music, wending around between all the boats in the anchorage. A Ferris wheel and fun park adds to the atmosphere.

Tourism is quite new in Albania, but the country has a beautiful coastline, rugged mountains with many castles and archaeological sites to visit, now UNESCO World Heritage sites.
We sailed Mai Tai to the mouth of a river, 15nms south of Sarande, that led to the ancient city of Butrint, and took our dinghy up past Ali Pashas Castle, to the old city gate. We would hear a lot more of Ali Pasha here in Albania, visiting several of his castles. We learnt that he was an Albanian Ottoman Ruler from 1788 to 1822, a tyrant who was eventually murdered.

We were able to wander through the old city and it was amazing to see how well preserved the area is, the massive walls surrounding the once thriving city. Augustus rebuilt the city in 44BC and at one stage there was a huge aqueduct connecting the island to the mainland.

We rented a car one day with some friends to do some more inland tourism.

Firstly to another popular destination near Sarande, the famous Blue Eye Springs

Then on to the old City of Gjirokastra, another UNESCO World Heritage site, filled with traditional Ottoman houses and steep winding stone streets.

Amazing view from a 2000 yr old castle that dominates the entire valley.

The castle was used more recently, to house prisoners during Communist rule in Albania which ended in 1991.

There are not many anchorages up the west coast of Albania that offer protection from the prevailing nor-westerly winds. But we did find shelter anchored in a big bay, in front of the city of Vlore. Quite a few tour and day tripper boats come and go from here taking tourists out to some caves and bays along the Adriatic Coastline. This city of 180,000, was modern, clean and with large established trees lining the main streets offering some protection from the oppressive heat at this time of the year. Not many tourists in town during the day.

We never tire of watching the sun setting from a remote anchorage, or being joined by a beautiful old schooner to share it with.

Then, continuing up the coast, our next anchorage is Palermo, tucked in behind another of Ali Pashas castles. This one with some artwork of the Ruler on display.

We were keen to get up to Montenegro and our first check-in port was Bar, 84nms away. We chose to sail overnight and arrived, as planned, at the Customs arrival area, around breakfast time. There were no other boats at the customs dock, so we tied to a rather unfriendly concrete wall between 2 huge black tyres, and with very few bollards to tie to. The weather was calm and we hoped to be away from here within an hour. After morning coffee, we went to the Port Police and Customs, as usual, to begin the process of checking in to Monte Negro. With their paperwork completed, we were now sent to the Harbour Master in another building, 10 mins walk away, for the final stamps. We were missing one document, so they asked us to go back to the boat and return within 30 mins. No problem.
We were 5 mins away from the boat when huge rain drops began to fall. Where did they come from??? We began to run towards the boat as we had no rain jackets, and just as we arrived a wall of rain and 100 knot winds hit us. No-one had seen this coming, even our weather prediction programs. We managed to just get back on board as 2 metre breaking seas that had built up in the 300metres between the port sea wall and us on the concrete pier, lifted Mai Tai and slammed her continually against the concrete wall. We had large round fenders out, but they burst with the impact, so it was poor Mai Tai that took the bashing. No! No! No! it can’t just end like this?????

On a sad note, one man lost his life in that storm. The destruction to the city of Bar was astronomical. The local TV News reported that Bar had never in recorded history been hit with such strong winds. Here is a clip from the Montenegro News station about the storm.

The rain came down so heavily that it used the canvas awnings and wind sock as a funnel to fill the inside of the boat. Because we were being blown over at a 45 degree angle, the rainwater coming in didn’t just fall to the floor, but filled all the clothes drawers on the port side first.
The main wind and rain lasted for 45 mins, then the sun came out!!! But the seas took some time to settle. We could see the damage done to Mai Tai, but we couldn’t know yet whether any structural damage had been done.

I was inside and I could hear the cracking of the wooden cabinets, every time we smashed against the concrete. Lane was watching from the cockpit. There was absolutely nothing we could do.

When the storm finished blowing we wanted to get away from this pier, so we went back to the Harbour Master to complete our check in and ask to move over to the marina next door, as is the customary procedure here in Bar Harbour.

But, on the way we observed the major damage that had taken place around the marina. Trees were blown over and smashed through windows and roofs of restaurants were torn off. In the boat yard, we could see that at least five sailboats on hard stands were blown over, their masts broken and the boats they fell on were also destroyed. Such a heart wrenching sight! We asked the marina manager if we could come in and he told us a flat No. They had suffered major damage to parts of the marina and would not allow us to come in. After much discussion he agreed to let us come in if we could wait three hours. Next, we had to get the Customs Police to allow us to stay on their pier for three more hours. The guy on the front desk said absolutely not but thank goodness his superior overheard us and told him it was ok under the circumstances.
That settled, we started the clean-up and assessment of the damage. We spent three days in the marina getting Mai Tai dried out and cleaned up.

She has suffered some cracks in the gunnel and deep abrasions on the port side of the hull.

Her jib track was partially torn up, the rail is cracked in several places and some interior cabinetry was broken.

There was no damage below the waterline and therefore no water coming in. This is due to the wind blowing us over 45 degrees, which placed most of the impact on the rail as opposed to the hull. Thankfully, in Mai Tai’s construction, the rail is the strongest part of the boat. However, due to the boat leaning over so far, the stanchions and lifelines were badly damaged. The good news is we can fix all the damage while we are in Tunisia for the winter. In the meantime, we are trying to keep the port rail dry as the water runs through the cracks in the gunnel right inside the boat.

After we had dried out and were prepared to move further north, I was keen to go visit the church that we could see from the marina, and was pleased to see that it had survived unscathed.
It was hard to believe that such weather had passed by here 2 days ago. The city had done an amazing job cleaning up the mess on the roads.

We left the Bar Marina early in the morning and enjoyed a great sail right up into the Kotor Bay, where we had planned to meet up with some other friends already at anchor. So far Montenegro was meeting all my expectations with pretty villages, monasteries, churches and castles all clinging onto and built into, the surrounding mountainsides.

I was surprised at the size of the Bay of Kotor, being so much bigger than what I was expecting.

The main city of Tivat has a large marina that houses a large fleet of beautiful yachts of all shapes and sizes, and the city itself is a shopping centre for all the big European labels. It was fun to wander around and window shop.

The worst part about all the anchorages was the number of jet skis and high-speed tenders to the super yachts, who took great delight in racing around all the boats at anchor, totally oblivious to the mayhem their boat wake was causing, Or perhaps not!!!! Maybe they thought it was funny. !!!

But there were also grocery stores, laundromats and everything else we needed. There was plenty of room in the anchorages, the water was clean and very inviting for swimming. A necessity in the heat.

Of course, you can’t come to Montenegro without a visit to the famous old city, with the city walls reaching up to the castle above. There are apparently over 1300 steps to reach the top. I set off with a girlfriend at 0700 in order to reach the top and back down before the heat of the day. And before the thousands of passengers were disembarked from the visiting cruise ships.

We anchored in the bay and were able to wander the beautiful old streets virtually on our own.

Not far from Kotor is another village, Morinj, where the tourists are mostly other cruisers. We took our dinghy up a small river to discover a charming village and divine restaurant in a park like setting.

Of course, there is more to Montenegro than Kotor, so we rented a car to visit some of the inland area.

The drive up there was an adventure in itself, with 2-way traffic negotiating 1-way roads and tunnels. To see this in mid summer, it is hard to imagine how freezing cold it would be in winter, but there are many ski fields in the mountains behind Kotor.

On my list of places to see was the Ostreg Monastery, built high in a sheer rock face. It was a bit of a climb from the car park to the top.

It was very easy to spend a month here, but we will now start making our way back south towards Tunisia, where we have booked to spend the winter months. The repair work on Mai Tai is going to be major, and Lane has been putting into place everything he will need to do the jobs there.