The first phase of life as liveaboards on our new catamaran: November 15, 2022 – April 27, 2023
People ask us “why Montenegro” and the answer is easy – that’s where the boat was.
We had been shopping for over a year for a sailing catamaran that was in the Med and ready to sail. There were few offerings and prices just went up and up during the pandemic. When we found what looked like the perfect boat we pounced quickly – and it happened to be in Montenegro.
But we were not without connections to Montenegro before this event. Rockies Venture Club had met with the founders of Digital Den, a startup studio, or “factory” as they like to call it, that fosters new startups in the Balkan states and helps to bring them to the United States. RVC hosted a pitch event for them early on and the relationship was formed.
So, Montenegro is where we landed, and it turned out to be perfect because it was one of the few Mediterranean countries that are outside of the Shengen Area that limits our stay to 90 days out of any 180-day period. As Montenegrin “residents” (with our official resident cards) we could stay as long as we wanted and live aboard our new-to-us boat.
Montenegro is a beautiful country with just over 600,000 residents. It has coastal regions and beautiful mountains (hence its name “black mountain”) with ski areas and great hiking. Montenegro is also a developing country, overcoming its communist past as a part of Yugoslavia. It struggles to compete with the rest of Europe and is just now starting to engage in the global economy in a significant way.