Late June/early July, 2024
Porto Montenegro to Preveza



Porto Montenegro Marina, Tivat, Montenegro 42º26.154'N,18º41.540

Our cruising season got a bit of a late start this year, due to some unforeseen circumstances that kept us in the United States until the end of May. Fortunately, our sales manager at Porto Montenegro, John, seamlessly extended Awildian's winter contract into an annual contract, so that we could keep the berth until May 1, 2025. Otherwise we would have had to move Awildian out of the marina on May 1, 2024, which would have been a real pain as we were still in the States.

We returned to Montenegro, and our floating home, on May 21, 2024, and spent about a month getting Awildian and ourselves ready to go cruising. We'd decided to head south to Greece again, but not go as far as Turkey this time, before returning to Porto Montenegro the next winter.


Awildian in his winter berth, with sv Black Pearl's massive masts in the background

On the morning of June 28, I fed "my" flock of pigeons, and the group of feral cats, one last time, and wished them a happy and well-fed summer. I said goodbye to the local people who had become my friends, and told them I'd see them again in the fall.

Then Eric and I put our "marriage saver" headsets on, untied the lines that had held Awildian snugly since the previous October, and left the marina. Our first stop was the fuel dock, where we filled Awildian's tanks with diesel. While we were there, our friends, Jenny & AJ from sv Seas the Day, came to say goodbye, and to bring us some delicious chocolate muffins, which sweetened our trip even more.

When Awildian's tanks were full, we motored over to the nearby Customs dock, where we cleared out of Montenegro, and then headed for the mouth of the Boka (Bay of Kotor), where its water joined that of the Adriatic Sea. Our general plan was to turn left and keep going for about 24 hours.

"Where is that 15-20 knots of north wind you promised me?" Eric teased when we turned the corner and headed south. "This wind is definitely from the south."

The forecast had been very clear that we would get some north wind. "It'll come," I said. "I'm so sure that I'll eat your shoes if it doesn't."

No shoes were eaten. A little while later the wind did, in fact, fill in from the north, helping to push Awildian along with his mainsail up and jib out. We sure wished we already had that Code 0 headsail...

Not having sailed for a few months, Eric and I might be excused for forgetting a few minor details. For instance, neither of us thought to check whether any of the deck hatches were open, when we left the marina. It was a sunny day. Why would we?

You may wonder why this would matter. Sometimes it doesn't matter at all. But today it did matter, and here's why: when our mainsail is down, it's cradled along the boom in a cloth sling (called a "stack pack") whose sides are held up by thin ropes called "lazy jacks" that go up to the spreaders.

When it rains, water collects in the low points of the stack pack.

When we raise the mainsail, we lower the lazy jacks on the leeward side of the boom, so they're out of the way and the sail can move more freely as it's being raised.

With the lazy jacks loose, the leeward side of the stack pack is also loose, and it flops open.

When the stack pack flops open, any water contained within it pours out onto the upper deck, then flows onto the lower deck, eventually finding its way into the sea.

So that's what happened when we raised the main on this occasion. In fact, we expected it to happen. It wouldn't have been a problem, except that the hatch over our bed, which we'd forgotten to check, is located between the boom and the sea. In fact, it was directly in the path of the torrent of water.
And it was wide open. Dammit!

Dreading what I would find, I rushed down into the port hull and peeked into our cabin to survey the damage. Sure enough, the part of our bed directly beneath the hatch was soaked. Buggah! I hate having a wet bed!

On the (very small) bright side, only our memory foam topper was wet, not the mattress beneath. I was able to dry most of the water with towels, prop up the topper so it didn't touch the mattress, and between the warm breeze coming through the hatch and the breeze generated by the room fans, the topper was completely dry within a day or so.

We slept our off-watches in the starboard cabin, instead.

After the Great Dousing, the rest of our passage was blissfully uneventful. The weather cooperated, we both got acquainted with the new chart plotter we'd installed over the winter, and I enjoyed spending time with my passage buddy, the constellation Scorpio, whom I hadn't seen in awhile.

Preveza anchorage, Greece
38º57.96'N,20º45.46'E

This was our third time anchoring at Preveza, so by now we knew the "lay" of the anchorage, such as why no one ever anchored in the big, juicy open area near the fishermen's marina (the bottom is "foul" and would either reject - or hopelessly tangle - anchors), and we also had our "preferred" anchoring area (close to shore, near the little green building).




Some views of the anchorage

Once Obama was settled into the ooze at the bottom of the anchorage, we took our paperwork and our dinghy into the small fishermen's harbor, tied up to the wall, and went to check into the country using Sofia, our agent at All About Yacht. Then we walked into town.



Preveza is a charming town, with restaurants, grocery stores, and shops of all kinds, including Cosmote and Verizon stores where one could procure a Greek SIM card, three marine chandleries, and a shop selling linens!



We were (okay, probably just I was) very excited to discover this shop. Why? Because it sold complete sheet sets. In Montenegro, when you buy a "sheet set," what you get are two pillowcases and a fitted sheet. No top sheet. You have to buy that separately. And it won't match the others.

In Greece (apparently) when you buy a "sheet set," you get two pillowcases and TWO flat sheets. Which is actually preferable to having a fitted sheet, because who really needs fitted sheets anyway? Especially on a boat, with its oddly-shaped mattresses, stuffed into oddly-shaped spaces, fitted sheets are a pain.


The linen shop!! In case any of you want to buy linens in Preveza...

We bought two new sheet sets. It's the little things.


The Great Zinc Quest

Shortly before leaving Porto Montenegro, we'd hired one of the marina's divers to clean Awildian's hulls. The job also included inspection of the zincs (sacrificial anodes) on the MaxProp and prop shafts. The diver discovered that one of the prop zincs was gone. No problem, Eric went down to our stash of MaxProp prop zincs and brought one up for the diver.

But actually there was a problem: the zinc didn't fit the prop; the screw holes in the zinc didn't line up with the holes in the prop. What the heck? Our former boat, SCOOTS, had the same size MaxProp, and we'd always kept a supply of these prop zincs on hand, and replaced them as needed.

The heck was, our new MaxProps, which were installed in 2023, apparently had been redesigned slightly, and the pattern of screws that attached the prop zinc were now different. When the techs at Navar boatyard had installed the new MaxProps, they'd attached the zincs that came with the props. We'd just expected that the zincs that had worked for the previous decade with our other MaxProp would work for the new one...Nope.

Eric's first thought was that he might be able to modify our stash of zincs to fit the new props. He went swimming and took a good look at the props, to compare the screw holes in the old zincs, to the screw pattern on the new props. That being determined, and a nice shower on the swimstep being had, Eric retired to his workshop to modify the old zincs. (Spoiler alert: the old zincs couldn't be modified in such a way that they would work. We'd have to procure some of the new kind of zincs. Somewhere in Greece.) Hence the Great Zinc Quest.

We checked all of Preveza's chandleries, but none had the zincs we needed. We'd have to keep looking.

While we were anchored at Preveza, we had so much fun with lots of our cruising friends whom we'd met in Porto Montenegro during the two previous winters - Nicole & Trip (sv Kalyra), Seb & Suzanne (sv Racoon 2), Pookie & Heath (sv Sawasdeekat) - and also Keith & Donna from sv Bajan Blue, whom we'd met just before leaving Greece the previous fall.


Some of the fun

We had lunches and dinners and sundowners aboard each other's boats, swapping stories and expertise and boat parts.

One day we dinghied over to the little trimaran, sv Razzmatazz, that was anchored near us, to say hello and introduce ourselves to its crew. Tony & Anne, delightful people, are citizens of the UK who are in their 80s and have been living aboard for many decades, now dividing their time between Razzmatazz in Greece and a "narrow boat" on the canals in the UK.

Eventually we felt that it was time for us to move on from the Preveza anchorage, and continue our travels. During previous visits to Preveza, we'd always been in somewhat of a rush, on our way to somewhere else. This time we had no plans. And so, with this in mind, we decided to spend some time exploring the large inland body of water behind Preveza, the Ambracian Gulf, a place that we'd always wanted to visit.