The Voyage of the Mighty Tenho: sailing to Montenegro

There’s something very unique and slightly peculiar about doing multiple day/night crossings. First, there’s the “preparing for a long passage” mentality that takes over, and we fill up with water, fuel, food, clean laundry, and send last e-mails, as if we were setting off on a wagon train out west. Once at sea, there’s a sense of just biding time, and we fall into a routine of keeping occupied with games, reading, movies, and mulling over future plans.

On this crossing, we sailed past the entrance to the Gulf of Corinth, crossing the track we made last October when we sailed from Sicily to Greece. Both John and I were tempted to turn east and do it all over again! What a different feeling it is now, with the end of our trip in sight. In just two months, I have plane tickets to fly with the kids (and cat) from the Azores back to the US, while John will finish sailing the final leg with my two brothers-in-law. On one hand, I was tempted to have us all sail back together, but sailing across the Atlantic isn’t actually that much fun for the kids, so instead we’ll spend those last few weeks on my parents’ farm in Wisconsin.

But back to the crossing. Without any land nearby, we find we get inordinately excited about any signs of land…anything that isn’t water or wind. Like the lost little bird that flew into the cabin and then stayed on our boat for awhile eating bugs, or the night hawk that flew past, or the phosphorescent plankton in the water at night which makes it look like we’re sailing on top of the Milky way. Especially exciting…the ZZZZING of the fishing line! Fish on! It’s our family at its best, adrenaline and spirits high, everyone wanting to get the filet knife, but not wanting to jinx it until the fish is in the boat, and Maggie doing her special fish dance. Day two was a repeat, an even bigger tuna this time!

We’ll stay here in Montenegro in the Bay of Kotor for a few days, then head to Croatia.