“Never seen anything like it”
every Old Salt within 200 miles of Tivat
Let’s start with The Bora, shall we? From my journal, February 4th:
Well, the Bora blew in tonight. Like a freight train coming down the tracks, sparks flying, whistle blowing. I was sitting on the Front Porch this afternoon playing games on my phone, feeling the sun on my ankles and enjoying the quiet while Peter tried to sleep off some of his jet lag. A breeze suddenly picked up – out of nowhere, it seemed – and within a minute I’d retreated to the indoor salon to escape the chill. And over the following 15 minutes the breeze grew to a strong wind, and I started tightening things up – zipping down enclosures in the cockpit and helm, bringing in cushions, and checking fenders. At that point, given it’s an icy wind out of the north and the sound of it barreling down from the narrow fjord up the bay is infamous, it was obvious this was the beginning of the notorious Bura wind, the Bay of Kotor’s version of the Meltemi, the Mistral, the Harmattan.
By the time we went out to E dock for dinner on Grace [Saved by Grace, Natalie and Colin’s boat], it was howling. I’d seen a 42.5 knot gust while I was working on the helm enclosure, but as we ate dinner and talked, the WhatsApp group started to light up. 50 knots on M, 70 and up out on O and P docks – and then out at the indoor helm in the galley Nat yelled “that was a 93!”
Then the calls for help started coming through the group: a dinghy broken loose on I dock, a cover ripped off further down on E, a solar panel gone, a stanchion broken, it didn’t stop. We took our leave, and within moments of getting off their boat it was clear that there was damage all along the E dock – it swarmed with marineros frantically attending to boats of absentee owners – tightening lines, re-setting fenders, securing dinghies. We passed a big cat listing wayyy over, as if its starboard pontoon was taking on water, and suddenly we both stopped gaping and felt an urgent need to get back to B dock and make sure OUR boat was ok.
Walking was difficult in the gale. We could make out the fronds on the palm trees on the jetty whipping raggedly. Sea spray soaked us once we got to the jetty, and the roar of wind was constant, screaming through rigging. And we found Flying Fish battered but relatively fine. The main zip on the helm enclosure is blown, so the rest of the enclosure ripped out of its upper fastenings and was sagging and thrashing. We rolled up enough of the isinglass to allow more flow through, then lashed the rolls to the bimini stanchions to avoid the entire enclosure blowing down. Our port stern fender – tied horizontally – was rolling under the dock, which meant every good gust put our sugar scoop under the dock and risked getting wedged in there. Our flag was simply gone – the wooden base of the pole, still screwed into the base of the bolted-on pole holder, the only evidence there was ever a flag at all. (Peter spied it sometime later in the water by the jetty and was able to retrieve it with the boat hook.)
Meanwhile our northern neighbor, Shivaya, with the very loosely secured boat cover, was threatening to simply take flight. Eberhard, who had arrived just a few days earlier, was out there holding the cover down when we got back to the dock after dinner. Just standing there in the gale, the cover fisted in his hands, and laughing, albeit a bit hysterically, about his extra sail. Fortunately, plenty of fenders stand in the way of our two boats ever truly meeting, but it is a very good thing they’re there. We would be sitting in their cockpit right now otherwise.
As we were working on our stern fender, Miloš [our marinero] texted to make sure we were ok. He’s on the emergency crew out there all night, and said there is damage everywhere in the marina, on every single dock. I quickly let him know we’re buttoned up pretty well at this point, and his biggest focus should be on remaining safe. Now the gale is still blowing, but it sounds like it’s past the peak. Peter’s trying to get some sleep again, since we know we’ll be up much of the night checking how things are holding – there won’t be many people sleeping anywhere in the marina tonight – and I’m planted on the salon bench, feeling the tug, stretch, and then jolt on the lines, listening to the windy woo, and wondering what tomorrow will bring. Or even 2 am.
Post script: When we “woke up” the next morning, it was relatively still. I laid in bed sighing, naively, “it’s over. Christ, what a relief.” A few minutes later I heard it. The roar was unmistakable at this point – it was coming again. Fifteen seconds later it hit, and our stable little catamaran actually heeled in the force of it. We were up again. We ventured out to the Service Block at one point, and saw that on two different boats on the docks north of us, the mainsails had loosened and simply shredded in the wind. I learned later that after the marineros managed to refurl one, but then nearly lost their heads when a gust whipped out of their grasps again, Roddy, the marina manager, ordered them to just let it and the other one go. They took less than an hour to shred.
Many of our community suffered damage to their boats and other losses, and we consider ourselves extremely lucky. In addition to our flag and helm enclosure, our only other boat casualties were scraped and displaced rubber edging on our port sugar scoop, and the loss of two fenders: the stress of Shivaya slamming into us eventually popped one, and the top of a second one simply ripped off and we fished out the tattered remains one sunny day a couple of weeks later when we could see it on the bottom. We also spent an afternoon rethreading the helm enclosure, and although the main zip remains unzipped, the sanctuary of the cockpit is reestablished, and even on cloudy days can be a remarkably pleasant place to be. A friend has referred me to a local seamstress who works on boat upholstery, and I’m hopeful that she can work our relatively small job into her schedule soon.
In the end the Bora continued for two more days, worsening the second day and night, when Claire and Ollie on Aquila Constellation, four boats down from us on B, documented a gust of 108 knots. One of the Four Mouseketeers* registered the same, as well as multiple 100+ knot gusts. In more familiar terms, Class 2 hurricane winds. The next day still howled and thrashed, but after that it calmed back down to normal. Normal, that is, for the Bay of Kotor in winter.
Now you can read about the rest of February!
*The Four Mouseketeers were the super yachts moored on the other side of the jetty from us. We gave them their name because their gigantic radar installations on their top decks look just like Mickey ears. They are otherwise known as Elena, Reve d’Or, Bombay, and Trident. Since February Reve d’Or and Bombay have left, and were replaced first by Star Dust and then by La Familia. These vessels and other super yachts are generally regarded by our community as obscenities. But really, really cool obscenities. I find them useful for blocking us from southerly winds but otherwise entirely offensive.