Zdravo, and greetings from Lustica Bay, Montenegro

I honestly cannot believe it has been a year, almost to the day, that Ron and I set sail on our maiden voyage.

Now the first thing you might be wondering is 'why the heck are you in Montenegro?'

Great question, my geographically astute friends. You would/should be curious about this litle detail since Montenegro is in the entirely opposite direction from the Canary Islands. And we spent a great deal of time telling everyone when we were visiting Calgary that upon leaving Tunisia we were headed to Las Palmas as the starting point for our trans-atlantic crossing.

So why did we turn right when we should have turned left? Well, yet again our plans have changed. This time, not because of Mother Nature or immigration regulations, but rather because when we got back to Kantaoui we heard from our broker in Florida who explained the marine vessel market has been highly impacted by the recent changes to American legislation, and for our specific scenario, selling Maelstrom in the US is no longer palatable. His advice - if your plan is to sell within the next few years, stay in the Med.

This news was quite a lot to take in at first. But, like most unexpected things in life, once we got over the shock and came up with a new plan, we started seeing the positives, namely:

• we no longer have to go head-to-head with the orcas (which was totally freaking me out)
• I am no longer sending my mother to an early grave (at least for this reason, as she was also totally freaking out)
• neither Ron nor I have to pretend that we like each other enough that we were going to survive the journey (one of us was for sure going overboard)
• and most importantly, with a year of living on Maelstrom and the luxury of knowing so much more now than when we first started, we can give sailing the Med another try. Hopefully learning from our mistakes and having a much better time of it. On this point I am very happy to report so far, so good :)

As an homage to my project management peeps, and perhaps a little nostalgia for a profession that I really loved, I now present to you our lessons learned:

1. Maelstrom needs a home base. For this we have picked the Marina at Lustica Bay, Montenegro. This allows us to tuck in safe when the weather is garbage, but also allows us to sail around the area when the weather is fine with tons of places to go for day trips (Croatia, Italy, Montenegro). 

2. I am a fair-weather sailor. If there were any doubts that this new plan was going to make me happier, those doubts were put to rest when we got caught out in another massive storm (the biggest and most terrifying one so far) in the middle of the night when we were going from Tunisia to Montenegro. We turned around, 35 NM short of our destination, and gave it another go a few days later when Mother Nature opened a window, but good grief, I am done with this level of 'excitement'.

3. Lastly, and what is certain to be the shock of the century for anyone who knows me, I am a bit of a princess. I am all for 'roughing it' once in a while but for the vast majority of the time I like things clean, modern and nice. With its 5-star amenities, Lustica Bay checks all the boxes in this regard.

What a year it has been :)

I love the idea of anniversaries as an opportunity to intentionally reflect on what we have achieved, seen, conquered, learned, lost and loved. Over the course of the last year we have sailed 2825 NM, visited/lived in 8 different countries (a few more than once), suffered loss, seen breathtaking beauty and shocking squalor. We've laughed, cried, felt like the most courageous people on the planet, and the biggest frauds. We've learned so much about the world, sailing, ourselves and each other (although apparently Ron already knew I am a princess - news to me). We've been reminded that kindness is free, you control nothing, life is too short, and 99.9999% of people are good.

If you are sticking with us and still following our crazy adventure, cheers and thank you (truly!!!). Where are we going next? We have absolutely no idea. But fasten your seatbelts and keep your hands and arms inside the cart at all times...what I know to be true is it will be full of twists and turns.

May you have fair winds and following seas.

Charity

xo

A few highlights from the last weeks. Be sure to check out our Insta/FB pages for videos.

Ron caught a beautiful yellow fin tuna on our sail north from Tunisia to the south of Sicily. 

The 800 NM journey afforded us the opportunity to use our Code Zero sail (upwind sail best for apparent wind no greater than 15 knots). 

An unfortunate run-in with this piece of garbage in the middlle of the ocean. It got caught in our prop and forced Ron into the chilly water to untangle it. Scary moment when there is no land for miles, the sun is setting and all of a sudden your starboard engine quits on you. Very grateful it was a quick fix and there was no damage.

Speaking of sunsets...

Lustica Bay Marina, Montenegro. Maelstrom's new home. Pretty by day...

...and at night.

Those clouds lit up a pretty spectacular lightning storm later that night. Lustica Bay, Montenegro.

We have 12 restaurants to choose from without leaving the marina. Lustica Bay, Montenegro.

The scene of our first little day sail away from the marina for a night. Bigova Bay, Montenegro - 2.5 NM from home base.