FrankingWorldTraveller

Visited Oct 12, 2014

Cavtat is the closest harbor to the Dubrovnik airport, and also is a fine anchorage (or two, really). Cavtat sits on a point, and two harbors flank this beautiful peninsula that features a pretty path all the way around.

On the side where we anchored on the wall, the Riva, or waterfront promenade, is lined with restaurants and cafes.

At the furthest inland part of the harbor, an area is buoyed off for the water polo team. What a terrible way to end the day it is to sit in a café having a glass of Malvasia watching the water polo team take a group shower with a water hose.

We took the bus (#10) from here to visit Dubrovnik. We only spent one day there and found that to be enough. We stayed in Cavtat another day and booked massages, jogged and enjoyed this small, and empty in October, town.
Cavtat is where we picked up our friends Dave and Jan for a few days of Amante time, and let them back off to join their bicycle trip from Venice to Montenegro! It is also the port to check out of Croatia, thus the EU, to go into Montenegro, thus out of the EU, for those avoiding paying VAT to the EU as well as to the US. The trick is that you have to be tied to the customs’ dock, the 50 meter part of the wall closest to the left as you enter, even if you are currently tied snug and secure 5 feet from the edge of this dock. Sigh.

Otak Molat, Croatia September 18
Maybe it was just time to get some slower paced island time or maybe this day WAS really this interesting. Or maybe, like the title suggests, twisted is in the eye of the beholders. On our second night away from cities and marinas and even good hygiene, we found ourselves at anchor in small harbor on Otak Molat, Croatia. I had already woken up to the sound of the Octopus man and bought dinner (see Cooking My First Octopus), and Neal and I needed a little exercise so off to shore we went. We jogged the length of the small island towards a harbor on the opposite side, 7KM away. Along the way, we saw this dead snake.

Later this one.

We saw one live one, too, but I didn’t hang around it long enough to snap a photo. Then I noticed something odd in the trees, a thin twisted pair wire running from tree to tree, trellis to trellis, now and then looped around an olive tree branch.

I was fascinated. So we followed the wire all the way to this- what I assume to be a Telco box. Telco piracy!!

We were so tickled we had to back track and follow it back to its source, one twisted pair following another. Here is the culprit!

Naturally, I had to clock this on my GPS watch (further proof of twistedicity). It was over half a mile long!
When you get to see three snakes, an octopus sold and cleaned live and wriggling by a man in a Speedo, and a half a mile of twisted pair hanging from trees all before lunch, you know you have finally achieved island life nirvana!

Amante (really, her crew) is rather famous for having no plan. Why plan when weather, unforeseen potential buyers, weather, cheese festivals, weather, wine festivals, weather, jazz festivals, weather, a friend we met last week happens to be in Italy and wants to come sailing, weather or weather ultimately decides for us what we will do. Just to prove that we do actually try to plan, but often fail for the aforementioned reasons, here is:

Amante route 2014 Plan A:

We tackled this in two halves, and since Matt and his Fiancé Emma wanted to join us at a particular time and a particular place, we hauled boat to make it happen. No one but offspring gets this consideration. So the actual route occurred in two halves. This first part we did before attending and Matt and Emma’s engagement party in Wetherby, England, then coming back to Tahoe for July- August. This part was a LOT of navigating, too much for my taste. This included three overnight passages, which wear me out!

The second half of the season was far more civilized. It was also fall, which means the crowds were gone and the weather was more settled than in spring, but just a bit. We spent a full month moving slowly through Croatia thoroughly enjoyed it. How did we pick our locations? Our famous sailing idol couple, the Berkeleys on Berkeley East, left notes on where they have been. I plugged them into Google Earth and violá, a plan. We didn’t get to as many places or take equally good photos, but having firsthand knowledge of where to go, where to anchor was so helpful.

Is that it is off center.

Fano, Italy. Part of the former Roman riveira, packed with nearly forgotten history and a nearly forgotten shipyard. Like our winter home last year, La Ciotat in France, Fano has a long shipyard past that is rather quiet these days. Wally yachts, the outrageously stylish Italian racing sailing yachts that turn heads the world over were built here. Once upon a time. It is now closed down. This yard still makes Amzimut/Ferreti motor yachts of 66 to 80 feet, but otherwise, the facility is hardly being used. We visited earlier in the year to check it out as a winter home. After careful depth sounding (Mauro with a lead line, as we visited by car and went out on someone else’s boat with no depth sounder), we considered it a go.

We managed to pull into Fano in high tide, and only got a little mud swirled on the keel, although we never actually touched bottom. We followed the marina guys, who led us in their tender with an extra tender following us in case a push was necessary, but we made it in by following carefully. So, in spite of depth warnings we made it just fine, and docked right next to the travel lift. The mast was pulled for maintenance and new paint, and Amante was almost out of the water for winter. Not the end of the story, as you can see Amante won’t clear the dock.

The problem with the slot is that it is off center, and too narrow anyway. Stay tuned for attempt #2.

photo1

But next day with shorter lifting straps, Amante made it out of the water.

Now she sits proudly blocked at the front of the Marina de Cesare in Fano, where many kind people have stopped to admire her. We love Fano and look forward to returning to Amante here next season.

Montenegro has a history that is so complicated that my only hope is to point you here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montenegro

Suffice it to say that nearly every civilization since before there was civilization has been through these beautiful mountains, leaving marks on architecture (and doubtless the culture) that have been destroyed by subsequent civilizations and restored by newer ones. Since splitting from communist Yugoslavia, Montenegro went through a pretty awful period, helping Serbia bomb Dubrovnik and then capture, torture and kill Bosnian refugees, but these days, everybody seems really nice, and bent on establishing high end tourism. The largest client base is zillionaire Russians, who fly private jets into Tivat, and pick up their Mega-yachts to go play in the Med.

We entered the giant Gulf of Kotor in clear, still waters ringed by dramatic mountains. We checked in to the tony Porto Montenegro marina at Tivat.

We had two beautiful days in Montenegro before getting trapped by weather. The first day we checked in, and got all our proof of leaving the EU paperwork done, and walked around the Porto Montenegro complex, shopped ate, walked the Riva of Tivat. The mega complex at Porto Montenegro is stunning. They have made a giant marina on the remains of an old naval complex, adding condominiums, shops, restaurants. The small town of Tivat seems to empty into port for the paseo or passegiata, the biggest danger being kids on bicycles zooming between wobbly legged sailors. It warranted a one day, one night visit, but that’s about all it needs. WE decided to take Amante into the bay of Kotor, with its famous church islands:

We sent one night in Kotor harbor, climbed the city walls to the fortress, and looked down on tiny Amante, next to the cruise ship in the harbor.

I knew that Dubrovnik was another beautiful walled city perched on an outcropping of rock. I had heard that is was bombed to bits by the Yugoslav Peoples Army in the war in the 1990s and restored to something of its former glory. I had read that “Game Of Thrones” has scenes shot here. That perked my interest!

Dubrovnik has a recorded history stretching back to the 7th century. Read all about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubrovnik.
There is no safe anchorage bear the town of Dubrovnik, just an exposed area in front of the tiny old town harbor, which is filled with small local, mostly fishing boats. Ferries and daytrip boats run in and out of the harbor frequently, making anchorage near the harbor entrance very choppy and dangerous. Some boats anchor out, as the conditions allow, for a day trip to Dubrovnik, but since we had to pick up Mauro we went to Cavtat, and town nearby and took the bus (#10).

Walking down a hill in many old European cities involved descending stairs entwined between buildings.

We walked down into Dubrovnik and went to the tourist office to buy the day pass that lets you into most of the museums only to find out that they are all closed on Tuesday, or whatever day it was. So we just bought tickets to walk on the fortified wall around the town. This is the only must do activity in Dubrovnik, as you see the whole town inside the walls as you amble around it. I say amble, because there are so many tourists, that even walking a reasonable pace is impossible.

It was so packed with humans that there is really nothing about the city I can comment on.
It was a beautiful warm day, perhaps the last day that would feel like summer. The restoration of the town, which was recent due to the war in 1991, leaves most of the red tiled roofs the same color, which timestamps them to the same year or so. The roofs with faded tile or tile with moss growing in it, are older and provide little contrast, sadly, as much of the town was destroyed.


A certain sign of the end of the season is that I was walking around Dubrovnik, the Jewel of the Adriatic, voted one of the best preserved medieval cities in all of Europe, and finding faults. Jam packed with tourists inside a walled city with few escape gates is one. Looks brand new in that- recently patched up UNESCO funded medieval town way- is another. But I could imagine that without all the human sweat, the ambiance would be sublime. The cathedral and Rector’s Palace looked beautiful (from the outside as it was closed), the Stradun, or main street was filled with people, so we wandered the smaller streets, and found a nice dress shop of local Croatian designers right across the narrow street from the Orthodox church. We visited the church, and then found 3 Croatian-designed dresses. Score!

We went in and found the town wall empty, so we decided to stay. It is very rare to be able to tie up side to in the med, but it allowed lots of folks to walk up and get their photo taken with Amante and allowed an easy docking for us! We had a nice jog and from here we took the bus to Hvar town.

Hvar Town is for people watching and mega-yachts only, so it was printed, so we toured by bus. We would have fit in nicely. Views from the fort above town were beautiful.

We anchored near Ston, and took the dinghy in to see the Ston Saltworks, a salt collection that still operates today the way it has since Medieval time. Ston connects the Pelješik peninsula to the mainland, so a wall was built to protect the peninsula. We hiked the 1.5 kilometers in the hottest day we have had since July. On the other side, in Mali Ston, there are exactly 0.0, that is ZERO ice cream stands. I recommend you skip it.

Then we went back with friends Jan and Dave from Incline. This time we walked to Mali Ston via the 1 kilometer road, had a stellar lunch, and THEN walked back the other way across the great wall, thus completing our loop AND ending up in the bigger town of Ston, with its several bars and ice cream stands. Practice practice!!