Cruising The Med - Sandy and Rob's Excellent Adventure: Back in Montenegro

On Sunday Aug 18, we left Toronto for Istanbul where we changed planes and flew to Montenegro.

Istanbul Airport is huge and is a very crazy place. We had 2.5 hours between flights and clearly this was not near enough time.

We landed early and thought all would go smoothly. Passport Control was busy and after standing in line and getting to the officer, we were told we needed to purchase aTurkish Visa (120 US$ despite the fact we were only changing aircraft) and had to start again.

We arrived up at the baggage area and no baggage from our plane had arrived despite all the fun with passports and Visas.

It was over 1.5 hours after we landed that the baggage arrived.

We almost missed our flight to Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro and it is a travel miracle that our baggage somehow managed to also make the flight.

When we arrived, Rob walked off property to find a better deal on a taxi. It was 36 degrees and very hot. He found a friendly old guy who drove us the 1.5 hours to Tivat for 60 Euros rather than the 80 they charge at the airport. Lovely except the air conditioning was broken so we stopped for fuel and cold water on the way.

We were so elated our bags had survived the trip we didn't mind the heat.

Once back in Porto, we began many projects so that we could prepare for our trip to Greece.

First, Rob installed a really nifty lifting system for the new motor he bought. It is really too heavy to try to man handle so this has worked out well. It took over five hours to get everything balanced and I did some bizarre yoga tricks to crawl into a tiny hole to thread and tighten the bolts on. Rob is very proud of this new toy and successful project.

We enjoyed a lovely dinner in Porto Montenegro at our favourite restaurant, Al Posto Guisto.

We saw two new one design boats arrive in the port. They are Tofinou 9.5's. At just over 28.5 feet, these day sailers sport mahogany decks and are quite the "Gentleman's Sail Boat". They cost close to $300,000 each. That is not a typo. That's $10,527 per foot!!!! We almost had a chance to race them but they were already full of crew so too bad for us...

The next day, I set out for a Yoga class which turned out to be cancelled so I rode the folding bike along the shore to Kotor and back. Including stopping to take a few pics for the blog, reattaching my chain which dropped off twice and getting some fresh water in Old Kotor before my return, I spend just over 2.5 hours on the bike. Distance round trip is around 30 km.

I did all the laundry for our trip and some grocery shopping and we are ready to start out for Greece tomorrow morning early at around 7am. We will travel direct to Corfu which should take us between 25-30 hours.

We just returned from the fuel dock here at Porto Montenegro where we fueled up right behind the famous tennis player's yacht, "DiJana" named after Novak Djokovic's mother, Jana.

Once we arrive in Corfu, Greece and get some rest and settled, we will tour around the Ionion Islands first. Then, time permitting, we will venture to travel through the Cylcades which look lovely and they are famous for good wind every afternoon.

I have been using Predict Wind and it is great. I was able to use way points to map our trip and it forecasts the weather the whole way including wind direction, velocity, etc...

Back for Dinner at Al Posto Guisto in Porto Montenegro - Tofinou 9.5's in the background

Tofinou 9.5's $300,000 Day Sailer's!!!

Yup, that is Mahogany...

View from the coast road looking into Boka Kotorska. Our Lady of the Rocks Church/Island in the Centre off in the distance - Hazy morning but great for biking!!!