Back to Pula, 25-26 June 2024

After almost three weeks wandering around the North Western coast of Italian Adriatic I was left with the task of bringing back Belisama from Rimini to Pula. Seventy-five miles, all together, so not such a big deal. Except that the weather forecast was most unclear...

Out of Rimini marina, waiting on anchor for a favourable weather window...

In theory, it is a a simple task to plan a cruise given the performance of the weather forecast nowadays. Except that they still have problems to take into account the very low scale coastal effects!

Given the forecast on Windy, I decided to depart at 20:00 from the anchoring outside of Rimini to benefit from a North-West wind. Seventy-five nautical miles to go, so around 15 hours of sailing should everything be as expected... However, the Furuno navigation system refused to activate the Navigation pilot due to a heading direction fetching error. And this made a big difference between checking with one eye how the pilot is doing, versus steering the boat directly for 15 hours under head-wind... I should admit that, in a way, I love those kind of activities for the challenges they are bringing! But beware of the challenges to feed, drink and pee when single handed on a boat without autopilot for 15 hours! I will need to fix the problem...

Sailing at night on the helm, through the Adriatic, with Norwegian standards weather protection!

The moon rises around 2:00 in the night. I get the feeling as seing now trough in a normal daylight.

Approaching Croatian coast, I encounter local weather effects not fully taken into account by the Windy forecast. Therefore, I experienced an unforeseen head-up land breeze 13 m/s, which I chose to handle through engine, given that I am alone without a functioning pilot. But very difficult to handle a sailing boat on engine in such a situation.

With such wind, no ways to head straight to the marina, single handed. I therefore decided to anchor in Punta Christo Quarry, one of our last season anchoring, in order to get the boat ready for arriving in Polesana Marina, her homeport. It gave me the time to prepare the boat for arriving in the marina and set the mooring lines. At the end, all went by the books!

It took 2 attempts to grab a good anchoring here because of sea weeds...

Belisama back in her home port in Marina Polesana

Then, by 17:00, I made it up back to Polesana, after this 256 miles most enjoyable tour of North-Western Italy.