So we made it! Last Sunday, already in the afternoon, Heron finally sailed off from Nautec Mare marina in Monfalcone. Not everything was finished and after four days under way we are already making list of things we forgot to bring along (and also the list of what we should have left at home and mistakenly took with us). But anyway, at some point one must decide that it's enough or one never leaves.
We tried to take care of everything at our house, say goodbye to all our friends and families, which was again very hard and emotional, and tie all the loose ends. We would like to have more time for everything, to meet more people, but we ran out of time. On one of the rare occasions when I had couple of minutes to take care of plants in my garden, I met this beauty. It is Broad-bodied chaser or Modri plščec (Libellula depressa).
One of the last things we were waiting for was the cooker. Here it is:
It is of Italian make, and it's a bit like Italian cars - looks sleek and fast (has powerful burners), but not of a too high quality - in our case the oven door doesn't open all the way because it is mounted too low and so we have another project that we didn't want. It is also less deep than the old one was, which means that I can cook on two burners in medium size pans and pots just fine, but bigger pots will be a challenge. I haven't tested the oven yet, hope that it will make me very happy.
Sunday evening we made it to Portorož, and after a good night sleep we sailed off. Wind from the South only allowed us to sail almost right towards West, so we figured we would drop the anchor somewhere at the estuary of river Po and continue towards Ancona the next morning. After whole day of very light wind and flat sea wind got stronger in the evening and it brought along some very annoying waves. We were not able to find a good calm spot for the night, so we just sailed on. It was my fist night-sailing after a long time, but strangely enough I didn't have any problems taking the shift from 2.30 in the morning til 6, when we anchored near Rimini. After couple of hours sleep we sailed on.
We have some new sails and we tested them all in all combinations - here we are flying the genoa and solent sail at the same time. Later we tried it with the main also and it worked very well in light winds we were having.
At about 10 in the evening we anchored in bay Portonovo couple of miles South of Ancona. It was already too dark for photos, but I managed to make one of sunset a bit earlier.
Next morning the wind picked up and captain was eager to sail off. Our destination were the islands of Tremiti some 130 miles away. That would of course mean another night at sea, but the weather looked calm and we thought it wasn't going to be a problem.
Day was calm, we were flying all the sails - genoa, solent ands main and were making good speed over a very calm sea. The sunset was again very pretty.
This time I had the first watch and everything was calm until I noticed the lightnings in the big cloud that was coming towards us from the mainland. At first the lightnings remained in the cloud, but later it started bolting into the sea. I got a bit nervous, especially when the whole thing came closer and closer. At midnight Captain got up and came to see how I was doing and I was relieved that he took over the next shift. I tried to get some sleep, but it was hard since the wind got stronger and the waves bigger. Captain let me sleep till 7 in the morning and I just got up to see the last couple of 3 meter waves. I don't think I ever seen waves this high in Adriatic before. Captain told me that he had winds up to 30 knots and even some rain in the night.This is the first view of Tremiti islands we glimpsed. You can see how choppy the sea was even between the islands.
We found a bit calmer bay with sand bottom for anchoring and had breakfast and went for a swim. Then the big tourist boats started coming and we decided to sail on towards mainland.
I still made some photos of the fortress on the hill at the island of San Nicola.
Mainland greeted us with the rain, clouds and lightnings again, but it was moving towards South fast. The town of Vieste looks very white against the dark sky.
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