Our first overnight crossing

It was time. Time to make our longest passage planned for the year – a crossing of the Adriatic Sea from Montenegro to the east coast of Italy. 

We had recently arrived back in what felt like our “home” port of Porto Montenegro after a pretty easy 6-7 hour passage from Dubrovnik. The only adventure on that journey was checking out of Croatia in the town of Cavtat. To dock at that port authority, you still have to med moor, but there are no bow lines so you simply drop an anchor off the bow first then back in to the dock. Unfortunately, with windy conditions we rushed the anchor a bit and it didn’t set right. We tied off to the dock from our stern, but kept getting blown onto the dock. Conor thankfully added extra fender action and then headed off to the police station to get us checked out. That left me on the helm to station keep and keep us from backing into the dock. That turned into a rev of the forward engine about every 15 seconds and a stressed out stomach that kept watching the clock wondering how long it would take Conor to get back. Turns out it was 30 minutes later. No real problem until our neighbor left and by fending off our boat he pushed us on to the dock. No harm done, and then we were quickly on our way and enjoyed the re-entry into the beautiful Bay of Kotor in Montenegro.

The weather had really shifted overnight after the storms that passed through Dubrovnik. From hot summer weather to more wintery nights. The temps had dropped by 20 degrees F. Nice during the day, but instantly cold at night. Interesting that there wasn’t more of a transition.

Once back in Porto Montenegro, we were prepping the boat for our next guests and for our upcoming long journey. Conor planned and prepared, then planned and prepared some more. Back up everything.

Our next guests were Conor’s sister, Cuala, and her husband, Olivier. They arrived from Ireland late one night, and we only gave them that one night in Porto Montenegro before we took off the next day. Weather windows! Cuala and Olivier are both very experienced sailors, and they kindly and generously offered to help us with this big leg of our journey. They are both certified skippers, and Olivier has been sailing since he was five years old. We felt we were in great hands, and we’ve been learning a lot from them.

Our first day, we did a small one-hour sail over to Herceg Novi, a place we had been before that is that bit closer to the open sea. This gave Conor the opportunity to introduce Cuala and Olivier to all the systems on the boat. Cuala and I explored the small old town of Herceg Novi while the lads made a last visit to the marine shop. We enjoyed a nice dinner out that night, then we all tried to get well rested for the long journey the following day and night. We had a perfect weather window to make the long 112 nautical mile crossing over the Adriatic. Our destination was Brindisi, Italy.

We left at 1:45pm after setting up life lines, having our night vision lights, life jackets with clips, and ditch bag ready, and adding the air of adventure. We were all on deck enjoying the sailing during the daylight hours. We had both sails raised and achieved the extra force for about four hours, only taking them down before it got dark. The wind and swell were at our beam, and Conor didn’t want to worry about having to reef or take in sails in the dark. We kept the engines on the entire trek, however, as he also wanted to maintain a speed of around six nautical miles to make sure we landed at a good time. We all made a point to watch the beautiful, calm sunset, then the darkness began to set in. 

I went down below to get dinner ready. I had prepped most of it before we left, so it just involved throwing a lot of things into a pot. Cuala had also prepped salad ahead. Maybe because we had a big constant swell from the open sea across our beam that kept the boat rocking, maybe because I was inside, maybe because it was dark so it wasn’t possible to see the horizon from inside – or maybe the combination – but, I experienced my first bout of seasickness. Not terrible, but surprising since I hadn’t had any issues yet. In any case, Dramamine came to the rescue and I was feeling ok after a couple of hours. 

Now Conor had devised a plan for pairs of crew to take shifts during the night watch. He and I had the first watch until 11pm, Cuala and Olivier took 11pm-2am, Oliver and Conor took around 2am-6:30am when I rejoined Conor and Olivier went for some sleep. 

The night crossing was amazing in that with no moon, we saw more stars than ever and they were brighter than I’ve ever seen. Conor and I even witnessed three shooting stars. There was such a beautiful calm and romantic setting to the night, though a bit dampened by hats, scarves, gloves and life jackets that kept you clipped in to the boat. 😉 The starry night was really something. The Big Dipper was so low in the sky it looked as if it could just reach down and scoop up some of the sea.

On our shift, the only excitement was experiencing our first other large boat to dodge. Cuala and Olivier were watching the navigation screen from inside the boat while we had ours up at the helm. Olivier came running up to say we were on a collision course with this oncoming craft. Conor kept changing our course trying to figure out how to avoid this oncoming craft that didn’t seem to be moving or reacting at all. At one point he even thought it was just an oil rig or something else stationary. Turns out it was a real large ship, and we dodged it just fine. Also, for the life of us, we could not figure out how to get the screens to dim into night mode with red light. We ended up covering the helm nav screen with a thin t-shirt and would lift it as needed, however, the bright light ruined our night vision each time. This was all just the beginning of really learning how to use the features of our navigation system. (Olivier figured it out a couple of days later, so we’ll be ready if we ever have to cross overnight again.) Have I mentioned auto pilot? It is definitely the business.

During Olivier and Cuala’s shift, they had some excitement with two vessels coming at them from each direction (so four ships in total). Sabática seemed to be sitting right in the middle. Conor relieved Cuala for the next shift while this was still going on, and all worked out fine. Conor and Olivier then spent a lot of time playing around with the nav system to better figure out its data. Doing this and dodging other boats, they felt like they were playing a video game. They witnessed a spectacular moon backlit by the sun right before sunrise.

Everyone was probably awake and up by 8:30am and we arrived safely into our dock at Marina di Brindisi at 9:30am. About a twenty hour trek and right on time.