Five hours around the bay
Kotor Bay · lazy, loud, slightly shaken · Wind: 20 knots replaced by 150 PS
The second day in Kotor was dedicated to a five-hour speedboat loop around the bay. After a kite week where the engine was mostly wind and questionable leg technique, the propulsion system changed to 150 PS, a captain, and a soundtrack. It was efficient, loud, and very convinced of itself.
The first big shift was leaving the protected inner bay and heading toward Mamula. From the water it looks almost too neat: a small island with a heavy round fortress sitting on top, guarding the entrance to Boka Bay. The building started life as a 19th-century Austro-Hungarian fort and later became a prison camp during the Second World War. Today the same island has been restored into a luxury hotel. History, apparently, has discovered dynamic pricing.
Nearby Žanjic beach was the softer version of the day: very few people, clear turquoise water, boats tied lazily along the edge, and that dangerous holiday feeling that maybe doing nothing is a valid skill. The sea had the colour that makes every phone camera think it has become professional.
Then came one of the former Yugoslav submarine tunnels. The Bay of Kotor was strategically useful because it is deep, sheltered and folded into mountains; during the Cold War, hidden naval moorings were carved into the rock so vessels could disappear from the air and from unfriendly eyes. Floating into one of them by tourist boat is strange: half naval bunker, half echo chamber, half Bond-villain parking garage. Mathematics suffers in tunnels.
The route also took in Our Lady of the Rocks and Perast. Our Lady is the artificial island opposite Perast, slowly built by sailors dropping stones and sinking old boats loaded with rocks; the church on it dates to 1630, and the local Fašinada tradition still adds stones every July. Perast itself sits in a calmer, baroque posture along the bay, as if it knows it is photogenic and has stopped pretending otherwise.
Blue Cave added the expected theatre: light, limestone, blue water, and boats moving in and out like everyone had booked the same secret. It was beautiful, yes, but also a reminder that caves are more peaceful before the invention of engines.
The boat crew had music, momentum and two Australian ladies who somehow appeared in Kotor, which sounds like the beginning of either a travel story or a customs form. The atmosphere stayed easy: sun, spray, jokes, a few stops, and the constant rhythm of the hull hitting small waves. A lazy day, technically. Somehow the body disagreed. Boat jumps and engine noise create their own kind of fatigue — less noble than kiting, but very committed.
Kite wins here for me. Wind has elegance. A speedboat has horsepower and volume. Both move you across water; only one makes the spine write a complaint.
Back in Kotor, a short refreshing rain passed before evening and cleaned the air just enough for the town to perform again. Wet streets, mountain silhouettes, harbour lights, the city walls glowing above the old roofs: classic Kotor atmosphere, slightly dramatic but tastefully so.
It was also time to say goodbye to the bay. Tomorrow is the short transfer to Budva, and the final coastal days start there. Kotor closed with water, stone, rain, engines, old tunnels and one quiet conclusion: after the wind week, I can confirm that “lazy” is not the same as “rested.”