Today we left Leuca with a forecast for fair winds to take us to Otranto, which is 25 miles up the Adriatic coast. Instead we close-hauled for 15 miles into 15 knots of wind and short, steep seas. We were making 6.5 knots of speed so it was fun, but when we had to round another cape, the wind increased and our new course would take us directly into the wind. So we bailed and sailed back towards and anchorage that was about 7 miles away. On the beam reach, we were making about 8 knots so that was fun too.
Once we got into the lee of some of the headlands, we started second-guessing our decision to turn back, rationalised why we shouldn't proceed with our original plan and turned around again to continue onwards to Otranto. Well, all our rationalising was wrong and we motored into 15 knots of wind and rough seas for the next 3 hours. That wasn't so fun, but we made it and are on the commercial wharf looking at doing it all over again tomorrow on our way to Brindisi or maybe even Croatia directly.
By the way, the weather forecasting for the Med seems, in general, to suck.
Branko
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