Then there were two.....

Old walled city in Dibrovnik

We are on a bit of a count down now til we have to winterise the yacht before returning back to NZ. All of our guests have returned back to their homes and lives while we have had the last 5 weeks going as far south as Montenegro , Bar....next stop Greece (Next year) and now as we write this in Trogir, just around the corner from Split.
I must say we thoroughly enjoyed having the Pelletts and the Hackers on board, not to mention Marina our first NZ guest, and we do find ourselves often commenting, "Tracey would have loved this when we are exploring the narrow lanes of old villages, or "Wayne would have loved this" when we enter a bay where we are the only yacht or there are lots of adventurous things to do.  And we certainly miss the fun and banter of the "3 Mad Hackers" but when all is said and done we are certainly enjoying being on our own again and being free to go where the wind takes us.
We thoroughly enjoyed Debrovnik and the highlight was walking the wall of the old city although we could certainly have done without the 40+ degress of heat.  What a fantastic job that was done on the restoration after a lot of it was destroyed during the recent war in the early 1990's.

Stunning Montenegro

Going to Montenegro "killed two birds " for us as we were able to Catch up with Simon from Nicha and travel with Annie and Cam from Annecam. saying goodbye to them as they head down to Greece, and also Clear out at customs as our 3 month were up and we needed to cross a border and come back in, and Montenegro fitted the bill as it was a non EU country.  Wow what a place, entering the Fjord and clearing Customs then heading further down the Fjord to Kotor was just magnificent, the huge mountains of Granite that go right down to the waters edge and all the little villages clinging to the coastline.

Kotor is a fortified town from the middle ages but was founded in the 5th century BC.  It was fortified by the Venicians during their occupancy. And even was part of Austria at one stage, and you can see this in the town square where there is a building that is definately Austrian in its architecture.


The walk to the flag pole

They floodlight the old fortifications and you can see them at night, the area around looks like the night sky with the granite looking like clouds.  Then in the morning it is quite a shock to see the huge mountains behind. We decided to walk to the top of the Mountain fortress, but as the weather was extremely hot we thought it prudent to get up early before the heat of the day as once the sun reached that side of the mountain it would be too hot to make the climb, it was worth it as the view from the top was wonderful, it was no mean feat I might add after some 3000 odd steps were climbed.  The old town was lovely with lots of very old buildings and churches.  The main religion appears to be Serbian Orthodox so lots of beautiful Russian style icons with lots of gold inlay.


The view was worth the 3000 steps

We said
goodbyes to Michael and Verena Hacker putting them on a bus back to Austria via Croatia, and also said our goodbyes to Simon Pennlington as this is likely to be the last time that we catch up to him in this part of the world as he makes his journey towards NZ.  We motor sailed further down the coast towards Bar with "Annecam" as we wanted to check out the Marina there.  We threw the pick over in a little bay just a few kilometres up from Bar staying the night there and having our last Pivo hour with Cam and Annie.  Annie and I said our tearful goodbyes as we parted the next Morning, we have become great mates in the  short time that we known each other and share a lot of life experiences especially when it comes to crazy husbands who tell their sailing inexperienced  wives they want to buy a boat in the Med and sail it back home.  Cam and Annie were on their way to the customs clearance wharf in Bar then on to  Greece and the next stage in their journey. We wish them both happy sailing and hope that we catch up again one day in the not too distant future.

Final goodbyes to Cam and Annie, Greece bound.

We went on to Bar and booked into the Marina for the night, as we wanted to check out prices for the future wintering over of Split Enz & to top our water tanks and do some washing.  We had heard that Starigrad Bar was worth a visit also, so after completing all our chores we headed into town in search of a cold Pivo and to find the old town, this was some 5kms away so caught a Taxi.  The taxi driver was very friendly and told us a bit about Montenegro.  The Ruins of Old Town Bar is one of the worlds largest fortified archaeological sites and was well worth the visit.  There is an olive tree there that is said to be 2000 years old, and the remains of a Benedictine Monastery that is said to have been established in the 9th century, the fortifications are again Venetian and date back to the 14th & 15th century. I was certainly glad that we made the effort to get there.


Ange at Stari Grad Bar, Montenegro

 On 10th of August we left Bar to head back to Croatia and a leisurely sail back to Sukosan.  The wind was good and Steve was very excited about being able to get some sailing in.  In our rush to get going we made the classic mistake of not closing all the hatches and bringing in the fenders before rounding the breakwater,  the seas were huge and Steve struggled to get this all achieved before any big waves broke over the bow.  I was  at the helm and prayed that I could keep Split Enz into the waves.  We managed to get this all done without too much getting wet.  We then set about getting the sails up.  Boy did we have some big waves and the sea was everywhere a bit like being in a washing machine.  We were going along quite well then Steve and I heard a noise like something pinging, we looked at each other wondering what it was and then Steve looked behind to see our Dingy off in the distance. Well you should have seen our faces,  I started to panic, Steve was immediately in action dropping the sails while I helmed. "Keep an eye on the dingy" he shouted.  Anyway we somehow managed to retrieve the dingy with Steve leaning out like a trapeze artist and me freaking out about what I would do if he fell overboard.  The seas were huge around 3-4metres, I was nearly ready to get off after that.  I began to struggle with sea sickness after this, the seas were all over the place and I was not very comfortable and fell asleep in the cockpit. Steve woke me a few hours latter and said that I should go inside as a big storm was about to hit.  I slept through all of this and Steve had a ball.  He had just the main sail out and reefed, the winds were gusting up to 46 knots with the wind behind and a following sea.  He said that the boat speed got up to 9 knots he had a huge grin on his face.  I woke up in time to do my usual chores with dropping the anchor at Risan Bay in the Fjord, as we were clearing  customs the next morning and sailing back to Cavtat. Well that's all for now I will post the next edition in a few days...... All good on Split Enz.

Customs flag at Cavtat

Up came the wind, it swung 180 degrees in minutes .