Thursday7 September 2017 – Bar (Montenegro)

The agent came to see us just after 8am. At this point I noticed that our fuel guage was rather low (about ¼) and it is unreliable.  I asked if he could get us a bit of diesel just to be on the safe side as we had a 30 mile motor trip ahead.  At this point Richard intervened and said it was unnecessary.  There was a bit of a domestic and eventually R agreed to top the tank up with 10 litres (I wanted 20). The agent then took Richard away to do the paperwork, which amounted to just one little slip of paper, and to get some fuel.  With this done, we were about to cast off when the agent told us to stop because the police wanted to search the boat.  Apparently they have had a lot of trouble with yachtsmen (from Turkey) smuggling cannabis.  A policeman came aboard and made the most cursory search you could think of opening two lockers and just peering into them.  Obviously it was all for show because if any drugs were hidden away they wouldn’t be seen where he looked!

So we set off just after 8:30 pm to leave Albania and go to Montenegro (which I keep called Macedonia - heaven knows why).  Again it was a long slow motor through little wind and flat seas.  We do however seem to have a problem with the instruments.  The log started to work, but was badly under-reading and then stopped.  The wind instrument shows a 60 degree error in the wind direction.  The plotter keeps losing the plot and jumping waypoints so we have to constantly watch that it is going the right way.  The whole lot have been under use for nearly 16 years, so I guess very soon we will need to think about replacing the lot.  We could have a word with our nice Raymarine man this winter.

The telephone and internet situation in Montenegro is a nuisance.  It is not included in our European free roaming.  Even worse it is not included in our suppliers world wide group where you pay £5 a day and get charged the sum on your contract.  Instead we have a 50p a minute phone rate and high download charges.  So Richard had turned roaming off.  I didn’t bring a spare phone to put a local sim in because we thought we could do the £5 a day bit for the week we plan to be here.  Ugh.

We get to Bar in Montenegro at about 2:30 pm.  Our pilot book waxed lyrical about the marina here making it sound very smart with every amenity you can imagine.  The book also said that you could go straight into the marina and they would help you check in to Montenegro.  But when I made my very expensive telephone call to the marina (the pilot book giving no VHF channel for it), they said we could not do that and had to go to the customs station in the main harbour and clear first.  So into the harbour we went.  We had only the vaguest idea where the customs station was from a rather limited explanation in the pilot.  But we found what looked like (and turned out to be) the customs pier and tied up alongside.  There was no one to take ropes and so for the first time in years I jumped off to fix the lines.  I can still do it!

Checking in turned out to be a pain.  We called straight into customs and they explained that we had to go to the Harbour Master’s office first and then police before going to them.  It took us nearly half an hour to find the Harbour Master’s office only to discover it was closed (despite the door saying it is open 24 hours a day) but someone was coming soon.  Soon turned out to be over an hour later.  We spent the time chatting to another boat owner who was checking out.  Interesting chap.  Bought a 40 odd foot Cat in France and has been sailing all around the Med for the last 6 years spending 6 months a year on the boat.  He is from Guatamala and also has US citizenship.  The boat is registered in the US (Delaware, of course) so he can only keep it in the EU for 18 months at a time.  He broke that time up here in Montenegro and was planning to do an overnighter to Greece tomorrow.

Someone finally came to the Harbour Master’s office and we checked in.  They needed lots of stuff and for the first time insisted on seeing the skippers sailing qualifications.  We knew this might happen and Richard does have all his (and my) certificates with the boat papers.  Then we had to go to the police who spent a long time looking into their computer and did stamp our passports.  They took a copy of our check in papers to the Customs and finally at about 4pm we were ready to go to the marina. 

The marina has a fuel pontoon. We had hoped to go to it on the way in, but a large motor yacht was filling up and that can take ages.  We called to them and they said they were nearly done so we hung around for over half an hour waiting for them to leave (they were occupying the whole of the pontoon space).  But even when they were obviously finished fueling up they didn’t go.  We shouted to them again and they said they had to wait for clearance.  They thought that would take 5-10 minutes, but in the light of our experience we gave up and went to a berth.  Of course as we started to tie up, the motor yacht left the fuel pontoon!

So by the time we had tied up, and checked in to the Marina it was 5:30pm.  I was fed up and exhausted by then.  It was very hot and sticky and we only had a small sandwich for lunch.  From the description in the pilot book I was expecting a really relaxed time with a cocktail and nice dinner.  No such thing.  The marina has the basic facilities, but it is that, basic.  Some of it seems old and neglected.  The toilet block has only two toilets and two showers for each sex to service the whole of the marina and the showers are hand held.  The people are very nice, but this is not what I wanted.  There is free marina WIFI, but it is very poor and Richard can’t seem to get it to work on the computer at all and only intermittently on his phone.

So hot, tired and hungry we had showers and walked into town where we could only find pizzerias!  We stopped at one place that seemed to have a more diverse menu and had some dinner and got a bit more WIFI to look at emails and download my Times.  We tried to stay up when we got back, but were too tired.  We want to start off early in the morning, after we get some fuel!  So early to bed.