Vieste and across the Adriatic Sea

We were slowly making our way towards Croatia after setting off in Sicily a month ago.  With two small children onboard Julia was understandably keen to avoid any unnecessarily long crossings so Vieste was our next and final destination in Italy.  From here we would have the shortest route across the Adriatic -we just need the right weather window.

I'll apologise here for mixing past & present tenses. It's tricky to stay consistent when events are in the past but the trip is ongoing.

Biscelgie to Vieste was a about 8 hours with good sailing conditions. We picked up a hitch hiking bumblebee for the journey.

Sums, spelling and snoozing down below!

The dramatic skyline of Vieste as we drew closer.

We are getting an engine alarm warning of a fault with the cooling water temperature.  I'm pretty sure this is a faulty sensor or corroded buzzer because it alerts even when the engine is cool. After a bit of research I checked the other possibilities. One being the fuel/water separator.  We are about to embark on an Adriatic crossing so it's not ideal but I'm am not too concerned.  In Vieste we tried to get a mechanic to give the engine a once over but the 2 nights we were there were a local holiday and festival so no-one could help.  Best fix I found was wedging a sock over the noisy buzzer!

Julia's birthday falls on the 8th of May and the children had been gathering shells to make her a necklace.

In Vieste we noticed these timber structures with outriggers pointing over the water and tried to guess what they were for. Wandering through the backstreets later on we came across this man building beautiful scale models of them. They are called Trabucchi -a rudimentary stationary netting contraption for catching fish without the dangers of going to sea such as storm and pirates.

A reminder that photos with a black border are taken with a proper camera, those without are Iphone.  I dislike the sterile photos produced by my telephone but so often it's the nearest camera to hand..

Vieste was in full festival mode and we were lucky to catch three marching bands parading the streets.  Zefi and Theodore were drawn to the carousel and despite us having no cash the operator let them on.  We returned the next day with a few coins but this was typical of the friendly vibe we had become used to over the last few stops.  We finished the day with a memorable meal in a restaurant built into a cave.

On our pontoon we got talking to a neighbouring boat who were also preparing to make the crossing.  They pointed out that we did not need to sail all the way to Split just to check in -there was a port of entry on the island of Lastovo about 5 hours closer!  This was great news as we were now looking at an 8 hour crossing with another boat for company.

Here we are setting off at 6am on the 9th of May, hot on the heals of Floris and Ursula onboard their Swedish Yacht Pleione.  With Julia enjoying the safety of more experienced sailors close by.

We exchanged photos of each other on the Navily app as we set off.

Another photo sent over from Pleione below. We had fantastic conditions for the crossing so didn't have to put up with the irritating engine warning buzzer!

We passed close by to a large cargo ship from Hong Kong.  We also caught the exact moment our log clocked 1000 nautical miles since purchasing and refitting Dragonfly!

Land Ahoy! We had safely crossed the Adriatic and were about to arrive in Croatia.