Montenegro

Fortifications at the entrance to the gulf.

What a fascinating contrast to Croatia! Montenegro only has a very short coastline (it seems as if Croatia has taken everything it could get its hands on including all the islands). On the plus side, it seems more relaxed and authoritarian than Croatia and definitely less grasping. Only marinas demand payment and most of them are fairly reasonable. Anchoring is widely available and universally free. On the negative it has a run-down, slightly threadbare feel. Apparently the government has not changed since the Bosnian War and independence and is not really motivated to improve infrastructure or repair derelict cold-war era buildings.

The Adriatic coast seems to be completely given over to mass tourism. Much of the coast is beautiful sandy beaches but they are covered in a seal-colony of tourists sunning themselves on regimented rows of deck chairs and parasols and surrounded by hotels or camp sites or both. The only real exception was the wonderful Gulf of Kotor - a huge Fjord that runs 20Km back into massive mountains. We spent most of our week in Montenegro in the Gulf.

When you arrive by yacht, you have to check in and buy a Vignette which we did at Zelenika. Not a pleasant place for a yacht with high concrete walls, black-rubber fenders designed for big ships, very few bollards to tie up to and no shelter from the prevailing swell from the Adriatic. The process was quick, friendly and not very expensive - we bought a 1 week Vignette as the next up was 1 month and too long. As soon as we were legal, we set off for Kotor which is at the head of the gulf.

After leaving the gulf, we went straight to Bar (the southern port of exit as we had decided that none of the heavy tourist towns on the way were worth stopping at. Bar has a large an expensive marina and a concrete customs quay in the commercial harbour. As soon as we tried to tie up at the customs quay we were told to go to the marina. With a bit of polite arguing that we were checking out and didn't want to use the marina he let us tie up "for 5 minutes". It actually took 25 minutes to complete the paperwork but we got no further hassle.
One of the contrasts to Croatia was that rather than "Go Now!" we had 24 hours to leave the country so we motored a few miles South.

The initial plan was to try to get into the North arm of the Bojna River but it was very shallow, badly charted and there were thousands of people watching so we gave it a miss and went back up to the tiny town of Milena. It's at the northern end of a huge sandy beach heavily covered by tanning bodies and backed by camp sites and the odd hotel but the little bay under the headland was well sheltered, good holding and gave us a peaceful night before setting off for Albania in the morning.