Our First Excursion

Skipper and crew are ready to make their first overnight excursion. Woohoo! We aren’t going far, but baby steps are not a bad thing. We’re going to visit Kotor. This will be our third visit to the beautiful town, but the first by boat. 

Here you can see a map of the Bay of Kotor. The bay to the east goes out to the Adriatic Sea. You can see we just go further in to get to Kotor. It was about a 1 ½ – 2 hour trek.

The wind is very sporadic so we simply motor there and back. Darragh takes the helm on the way there, and I take it on the way back the next day. Would you believe quickly on in our journey that a crazy wind blew Luke’s baseball cap off into the water and we were able to rescue it?! I noticed it was actually floating, so we all jumped into action. Conor brought the boat about, Luke was spotter, I helped with communications, and Darragh had the boat hook to successfully rescue the hat. Luke was thrilled we had practiced man overboard drills a couple days before!! 🙂

After dodging ferry boats, we aimed to visit the tiny islet of Our Lady of the Rocks. It has an interesting history and a beautiful church to visit. Unfortunately, we had a bit of a mishap trying to dock here, so we didn’t actually get to visit the church. Conor wants to describe that himself in another post… 

We pull into the marina in Kotor, being passed left and right by little speed boats. We call in ahead to announce our arrival and are met on the tiny dock by a staff member directing us to our berth for the night. (We had also called the day before to reserve a spot.) He assists us with getting our lines tied on. We end up being sandwiched quite tight in between two other boats. Welcome to Med mooring! Conor then has to go show our documentation and all.  

After lunch on the boat – thank you again, Cathy! – Darragh and I head off to explore and find the toilets and shower facilities that Conor’s pilot book describes. We discover the facilities closed down a couple of years ago, and the only thing available are general public toilets, usable for 50 cents. Ugh. Fortunately, Sabática has great showers and of course, toilets. We just like to use those on shore as much as possible to conserve our water and the holding tanks. 

Conor has a couple of meetings and the rest of us walk around the marina (did I mention how tiny it is?! There’s only one jetty.) to the nearby swimming spot to cool off. Those lilos are the business!

Now this is the way to see Kotor in the summertime – by night! It is so pleasant to stroll the Old Town when the sun has gone behind the mountains, and surprisingly, there is a ton of life. Lots of pubs and live music. We thought it would be much quieter after the cruise ship passengers left for the day. We have a wonderful meal at Pescaria Dekaderon. Cathy and I both had the most amazing duck ever – cooked sous vide. Of course, the evening ended with gelato.

The next day, everyone but me left early (to try and beat some heat) to climb the ancient Old Town city walls, a must when you visit Kotor. The first walls date back to the 9th century, and the walls today are impressively intact. About a 2 hour round trip. Photos courtesy of Darragh!

I had a bit of housekeeping and grocery shopping to do. Interesting contrast I found: Yesterday, after being in the Old Town, it was kinda cool to not be getting on a bus or into a taxi or on a cruise ship to leave. I was simply walking back to our boat. Something about feeling more local was great. However, the flip side was today – as all the tourists were simply strolling and enjoying the day, I had regular life / house things to handle like cleaning and grocery shopping. That was a bit of a bummer. Not bad, just an interesting observation/feeling!

It was time to leave Kotor. As we were literally pulling out of our berth a small speedboat crossed in front of us and looked like it would have hit us had Darragh not hollered at him. Conor had everything under control, though. We were just surprised and not sure how you miss a boat much bigger than yourself!

We let the Dubliners jump off the back of the boat near a beach on the way out, and I practiced my station keeping. We collected them then made our way back to Porto Montenegro. A couple fun sightings on the way back – a really cool sailing ship and our first dolphin sighting! 

All in all, quite a fun and eventful excursion. Kotor is definitely a place to visit if you ever get to Montenegro!

As we pulled back into our berth in Porto Montenegro, I had that feeling of returning home after a time away. “Home” being the familiar and comfortable. We’re leaving Porto Montenegro in just a few days and already I’m missing it! Facing the constant unknown will be a new thing to get used to, for sure. Enter growth opportunity. 😉

Lessons learned:

• Sabática is extremely maneuverable.
• Marine pilot (guide) books can be out of date even if they were published only two years ago.
• Assume all other boats are going to do something stupid. (And, we need to get a horn.)