Monday 11 September 2017 – Porto Montenegro

Up fairly early.  Went to the toilet block.   There is still no hot water.  The weather doesn’t seem so bad and for a few minutes Richard contemplates setting off from here today.  But the forecast is bad, so we stay put.  The marina office sends a golf trolley to us to take us to the showers on the other side of the marina where there is hotish water. We finally joined the washed of the world. 

We have a leisurely morning trying without much success to download the Times.  We finally succeed and decide to take a walk into Tivat (the local town). We discover there two supermarkets, and a proper market selling fruit and veg and fresh fish.  We also make it to the tourist office where we get details on how to catch the bus to Kotor.  We shall probably do that tomorrow if we are still stuck here.

I stop at a Slam shop and buy myself a new waterproof jacket.  My Quba sail’s one is no longer properly waterproof and given the current weather I don’t feel like relying on it until October!

Back to the boat and the weather is rapidly changing.  We have been moored alongside a Hanse sailing yacht with a Montenegro sail. The man speaks a little English and has been friendly.  His wife speaks not a word of English but smiles a lot.  They had gone from their berth when we returned from our jaunt around the town, but soon they returned.  By now the weather conditions are really bad.  It is pouring with rain and the wind is getting stronger and stronger.  They have trouble mooring and we try to help, but they really didn’t need it.  However when they have settled in Richard notices that we are not in a happy position.  The wind (which I saw reach 27 knots) is blowing us on the pontoon.  We have two forward lazy lines, but they clearly are not tight enough.  We try to put it right, but are not doing well, when our neighbour offers help and really does a good job of tightening up both the bow and stern lines.  The wind keeps ripping about, but now we feel a lot better.

For their help I give the guy and his companion, who also helped, a bottle of wine.  They seem very grateful. 

The weather forecast is still terrible.  The wind is meant to get up to 35 knots and the rain is pretty continuous and hard.  Even if the wind drops the sea will be rough with waves of between one and two meters.  So there is no way we can leave tomorrow.  We go over and speak to the Marina who are quite happy for us to stay one or two more days.  Everyone thinks that the weather will improve by Thursday.  I have to say this feels more like sailing in Northern Europe, rather than the Med!

As we leave the Marina office the heavens open.  We take refuge in a restaurant and feel obliged to have a cocktail.  I had hoped to glam up to do such a thing, but here I am in sailing shorts and sweat shirt.  Oh, well, I am a sailor after all.

As we get back from our drink and are ready to go aboard and make supper our neighbour asks us to come to his boat for a drink and we really can’t refuse.  It turns out that he and his wife are Russian and are on a boat belonging to his friend, the other man who helped this afternoon.  They live in St Petersburg and he is a stunt man in the movies and his wife trains eventing horses!  Conversation was a bit strained as his English is not very good and hers is non-existent, but it was fun meeting someone else.

So we are here for at least another day and then who knows.