Pre-Season Kickoff
We’ve been living on our boat here in Montenegro for a little over four months, and just in the last couple of weeks the marina has started, well, buzzing. Liveaboards who’ve been here for months and others who had the good sense to leave their boats here and spend the winter somewhere else are all getting ready. The Season starts soon: everyone has their target leave date, everyone has a plan, and everyone has work to do. It hit us when we returned from a long weekend in the mountains in March. When we got back to the boat, there was a tangible change in the marina vibe, and it’s intensified in the weeks since. People are on their decks cleaning, polishing gel coat and stainless steel, varnishing teak trim, draining dinghies, checking safety equipment. Bilges, engines, electrical and solar panels, generators, battery arrays, ovens and cooktops, fridge/freezers – everything is being checked and maintained: fix it now, don’t wait for things to break once The Season starts.
We’ve jumped right in. The indefatigable Anna, local upholsterer extraordinaire, fixed the main zip on our helm enclosure, which blew out during the first Bora, in less than 24 hours. She’s now working on installing new isinglass in the “windshield” panel of the same enclosure and making new cushions for the bench at the helm. Sirdjan, a local engineer who fixed our electrical panel when the cabin lights all blew in December, is coming round tomorrow to service our engines. I’ve requested multiple quotes from marinas across Greece and Turkey for the cost of wintering our boat from this November to March and have learned that 1) marinas are already filling up, and 2) the days of cheap wintering in Turkey are looooong gone. (Thank you, Vlad. Since Turkey is the only place still allowing Russian mega yachts into the country, prices for all boat services are up 200-400% from last year.) We’re ticking things off the To Do list every day, and remarkably, aren’t adding quite as many things to it at the same time.
In the most exciting news, our friend Colin did the logo for our new boat name, and we had it printed locally. (“Pure Harmonie” is out, “Flying Fish” is in!) In the meantime, I removed the old name and logos, and cut and polished the gel coat underneath to get rid of the “shadows” that remained after the old vinyl decals were gone. Eric and Vandy spent an afternoon with us applying the new decals on the bows and the name on the stern – the wings on the fish were particularly challenging, with all those little bits that wouldn’t move without tweezers and fingers peeling them off the backing and holding them in place on the hulls. The drinks were celebratory and well deserved!
We’re also practicing. Because ultimately, once this shit show of preparation has been cleaned up, you do actually cast off the docking lines and head out to sea. And then you find another place to anchor or moor later that day, and the latter requires being able to either pick up a mooring ball (piece of cake) or dock the boat “stern to,” that is, reverse into whatever space might be available in whatever little marina or town harbor you find to spend the night in. And since mooring balls are almost non-existent in Greece and Turkey, knowing how to reverse this 44’ catamaran into an open slot on a dock is critical. Especially when there may or may not be a marinero on hand to help secure lines.
We’ve now “gone out” on practice runs twice, which is about 200 times not enough, but is a start. The first, a couple of weeks ago, was just the strong nudge we needed to get going. Without warning one of our heads overflowed (oops! the holding tank is full) and it was suddenly imperative that we move the boat to the pump out station a few docks over and get our “black water” pumped out. The second was yesterday. We woke up to a brilliantly sunny, mildly breezy day, and decided to go to the fuel dock to fill the tanks before the inevitable rush of boats that wait til the last minute. For us, preparing to go out takes a while. We now have a checklist, and we talk through the process of leaving and redocking before we even turn on the engines. We don our “marriage savers” (headset walkie talkies) and start going through the checklist. Eventually we’re underway, and then the nanosecond of relief is supplanted by anxiety about what happens at the destination. Once under way yesterday we radioed ahead to the fuel dock to tell them we were heading over – but no answer. Tried them again, again no answer. I radioed the marina, who told me to radio the fuel dock. No answer. Well, hell.
In the end we docked ourselves before anyone arrived to help – and “we docked ourselves” is just a gross oversimplification. Peter suggested I try the parallel park technique of coming along side: go past the spot, reverse to a 45-degree angle with the stern near enough for him to loop the dock line over a pollard and then cleat it back to the boat. I then pivoted so the bow was close enough for him to loop the midships line and cleat it as well. It all sounds so easy! We chatted with Darko (the fuel attendant who showed up as we finished docking) as the tanks filled, paid the bill (you do NOT want to know), and then the fun started all over again. With a shove from Darko, I pulled away from the fuel dock and got far enough away to safely pivot to head away from it and the shore again – only to find that a regatta of miniature sailboats manned by small children was now bobbing back and forth in the space I’d just vacated between the fuel dock and the mooring area that they’d been swarming while we fueled up. I couldn’t go through the mooring area, or, since a boat under sail (ergo with right of way) was heading for the narrow open area on the other side of all the buoys, I couldn’t go there either. I needed to just hang tight. Don’t scare the kiddies – they also have right of way, after all – don’t hit the fuel dock, don’t hit the buoys, don’t hit the regatta coach in his dinghy, don’t hit the sailboat, and don’t hit the other sailboat coming in from the other side of the fuel dock, and keep in mind that it’s breezy.
We did eventually make it back to the B pontoon, and I managed to reverse us back into our spot without hitting anything. It definitely helped that Distraction, the motor cat normally berthed next to us, had moved to an outer dock while they’re having it cleaned and polished. I’d have hit it otherwise. And none of this is a big deal to anyone but us – everyone else around here already has at least one season under their belts, and docking, while always stressful, is just something you do. Again, and again. We’re not there yet: this has been a huge deal for us – but we will get there.
We’re going to have to. Our target leave date is April 15th. We’re among the earlier wave of boats heading out, but many more will be on their way within a week or two of us. (If the weather is bad, we may all go out together!) And at the mouth of the Boka Bay, some will go north to Croatia and Venice, and most others will turn south, with Albania and then Greece in our sights. And that will be the hardest day of all. Because for all the cold, grey, rainy, windy days here in Porto Montenegro, and the fruitless search for reasons to get out of bed at all on most winter mornings, we will miss our community here, the friends we’ve made, and the life we all created together here. They are the only reason I got through the winter. “Come by for a coffee in the morning!” “Peter can’t come? We’ll walk you to Curry Night.” “Ladies’ Lunch today?” “Can we be sewing buddies?” “Who needs a gelato?” “Let’s go swimming!” “Have you tried their hot chocolate?” “Nah, don’t worry – we were all scared at first.” And now, “We’ll see you in Greece. I promise.”
Had to say goodbye to my furry friends, too: Kitty and Rosie. :>(
And now a quick journal entry before all the post scripts, below:
One Day Left. Early tomorrow morning we’re leaving for Albania and Greece, and as a result, the boat is jumping today. Sirdjan just left, having serviced the generator and fixed the dinghy motor. Andjelko is finishing up the buffing and polishing on the port side, having completed the starboard side earlier and the hulls over the past few days. Anna is supposed to return with our new helm seat cushions this evening, and I just got back from the chandlery with our two new fenders pumped up. One has a leak, which is very unfortunate. There isn’t much that we can do about it – we ordered them from Germany, and returning it now is moot. So, we got a patch kit meant for dinghies, and will just hope that the patch lasts through the first real blow.
As the days have gone by this week, I’ve been feeling more and more excited just to get the HELL out of here, and more and more ambivalent about the same. Our last Curry Night was last night and provided a good opportunity to say goodbye to friends. Lots and lots of us are leaving tomorrow. We will probably cross paths with many of them again in Greece, which will be wonderful, but we won’t have this moment again. It is unavoidably bittersweet.
Postscript: since writing the above, we learned from our rigger, Jade, that the parts and supplies he needs to replace our standing rigging haven’t come in yet, and in fact, aren’t expected until mid-April. He will arrive on April 20th now – instead of today – and estimates it will take 3-4 days to complete the job, including a sea test at the end to tweak everything. That puts us well over a week past our original departure date, but we should still have plenty of time to get to Corfu, or even Preveza, by the first week of May. (Mia flies into Athens on May 10th, and by god I’m going to be there waiting for her.) On the positive side, this gives us more time to practice, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that!
Post postscript: since writing the above, Jade let us know that the pallet with all the cables and hardware for redoing our rigging won’t arrive until April 30th “at the earliest.” So, we cancelled the job and started crossing t’s and dotting i’s – the final preparations for leaving. We left Porto Montenegro on April 27th.
Post post-ity post post: We arranged to have Jade come to the boat while it was on the hard in a Nidri boatyard on Lefkada while we were home for the month of August. He confirmed that he’d arrived, and even that he’d taken the mast down. We were thrilled – we were going to make it back to Nidri in time to do a sea trial with him before he left! Then he sheepishly told us the parts had not arrived from Tivat – and in fact hadn’t even been shipped yet. He’s now DEFINITELY going to redo the rigging on Lesvos, after we head home for the holidays in December. Definitely.