As mentioned yesterday, the South East side of Sicily is more Greek than Italian and thus it comes as no surprise that the sea to the East of Sicily and to the South of Calabria is called the Ionian Sea. That is where we spent the night, while heading on a North Easterly course to the South East point of Italy, the cape that carries the beautiful name of Capo di Santa Maria de Leuca. Here the Adriatic Sea starts. Our course bends around this Cape and if we had been closer you could have seen it in detail from the SE side, the East side and later from the NE side. However we stayed about 14 miles off shore as that brought us to a Northerly course line heading straight for Kotor in Montenegro. Also it kept us away from coastal traffic and that makes life a lot easier as well. Still the cape and the coastline could be clearly seen, even from 20 miles away, as it was a very clear day courtesy of very strong winds blowing down the Adriatic Sea into the lower Mediterranean. At day break we had about 40 knots head wind, resulting with our 10 knots speed into 50 knots of relative wind on the decks. It remained like that until the early evening when the wind suddenly dropped away to zero. Leaving a confused sea behind that flattened out during the night.

Before we left Siracusa I had obtained two weather forecasts, one from the Italians, indicating strong winds and one from the Greeks indicating nearly wind still weather. That did not make sense to me, so I reckoned with the worst one just to be on the safe side. It turned out that both were more or less true, as this wind system, stayed on the Italian side and missed most of the western side of Greece, so there they did not feel that much. We got it all, as we had to go through the middle of the Strait of Otranto. Luckily, the winds here in the Adriatic do not have much chance to build up waves due to the lack of open water and the weather was hardly noticed onboard. The entrance area to the Adriatic is called the Strait of Otranto as it is named after the first major city Otranto on the Italian coast when you enter the area. As the “heel of Italy” sticks quite far out to the South East, the sea is quite narrow here, Albania on the other side is not too far away, and that makes the name Strait not that strange. As a result a lot of ferries serving this area leave from Otranto and Brindisi. The latter is the next major city up the coast. 

The area is busy enough for a reporting system to be in place, called Adrirep. (Adriatic reporting system) You call in to several shore stations while progressing up the Adriatic Sea, first to the Italians in Brindisi and later to a station in Rijeka on the other side. It is only compulsory for tankers but the rest can volunteer. Since the implementation of the AIS (Automatic Identification System) which is compulsory for ships over 300 tons, the shore stations can already see what ship is approaching and it now becomes apparent that if they know who you are, they do not even answer anymore. So my navigators tried to call in but the outside world remained silent. They knew of course we were there anyway.

Tomorrow we are in Kotor, which is in Montenegro once part of former Yugoslavia. It is located at the end a fjord, more officially a filled up river canyon and it takes about two hours to reach it from the open sea. The weather forecast calls for a wind still day and if that happens then I can dock. If it gets windy, then I will have to anchor.

The problem is that in this whole area the Bora can blow. That is a local wind that funnels down the mountain and while doing so gathers up velocity and by the time it arrives at sea level it can reach 65 knots. It normally lasts only a few hours but it can spoil the whole day. According to local intelligence, the chance of one tomorrow is very small, and thus I hope for a very nice day. Sailing in is very scenic with ancient villages dotted all along the hills and Kotor itself is magnificent. I have urged all my guests to be up early “to see the show”.  I have scheduled the pilot pick up at 06.00 hrs just at sun rise, so that everybody can see the whole passage and that means we should be docked right at 08.00 hrs.