Wednesday 24th July dawned bright and sunny with a good forecast of moderate North Westerly winds arising late morning and lasting overnight. We were up early preparing for the 120 mile passage from Bari in Italy to Bar in Montenegro, just dropping an ‘i’ in our destination. We left Italy soon after 9am.
In spite of the forecast we had North Easterly winds for a large part of the day which sent us off course towards Durres in Albania, but instead of steady winds from the right direction as promised, the North Easterlies died altogether early evening which gave us the opportunity to correct the course as we motored north.
The first part of the passage was uneventful apart from great excitement when a pod of some 20 or so dolphins swam alongside for over an hour, playing in the bow wave and doing all sorts of acrobatics. It was a wonderful sight and a great treat to brighten up the journey.
We found the North Westerly wind in the early hours under a full moon on Mo’s watch, so sails up again and then Mo was entertained by the dolphins once again. It was quite eerie with them leaping about at night! Later at 0545 came a brilliant sunrise over the Montenegrin coast.
As we got closer to land we hit a large coastal fog bank reducing our visibility down to yards. Fog horn out and radar on, we crept forward, sailing silently towards the harbour entrance. The harbour at Bar loomed out of the fog that was falling off the mountains and we tied up on the customs quay at 8am to check into Montenegro, a process that involved waiting at the harbour office for an hour, visiting the bank to make payment and then off to the port police and finally customs. In all this took nearly two hours. After all that we were ready for a swim so motored the boat round to a nearby bay where we anchored and swam. Water a lot colder than in Italy!
Deja Vu 
You must be logged in to post a comment.