We left Tivat, Montenegro on Tuesday morning, cleared out of customs, and motored in 'dead clam.' Jackie, Bob L and Mina: this is not the same Adriatic. Just for the record, if I have my choice, I'll take sheer boredom over sheer terror. Just sayin'. Before we left, Captain Ken ordered a customized weather briefing from the Commander weather service. It was spot on...even predicting winds to the hour. Perhaps the National Weather Service should contract with them when there is an imminent storm. Best $70 investment.

We found a lovely anchorage with only one building, lots of beach umbrellas, and boatloads of day-trippers coming over for the day. Satisfied that they would all be gone by dusk, we anchored for the night. Phil did say that this would be perfect as long as there was no swell from the south. Not only did the day-trippers leave, so did all of the other anchored boats. Our first thought...good. No worries about anyone dragging and bumping into each other. Hmmmmm. On second thought, do they know something we don't? Yep. The swell came in from the south and it was one hot, rolly night. We left early for our trip to Italy. No wind until the afternoon when we were able to motorsail. Since we would be doing an overnight, I thought it prudent to try and nap. There were a couple of flies driving me nuts. OK. It's war. I went after them with a vengeance. When all was said and done, I had killed 70 1/2, and Ken, Phil and Leigh had killed another dozen or so. (I know, Chuck...that doesn't even begin to compare with the 700+ green flies you and Ken killed in the Green Fly River in Delaware in 1992...the winner of which you are still debating.) (Under rules of full disclosure, the 1/2 was the fellow who was still half alive and crawling in the trash bin. I didn't get full credit for him.) I was sorry I didn't collect them all, take a pic, and have a contest to see who could most closely guess the exact number but, if the Captain wasn't happy with my shower and spice rack pix, you can be sure he would have hated a picture of the flies.

So...for all of you entomology buffs out there, here's a question which I'd love to get your take on: We never saw more than 2-3 flies at a time, but after each killing, 2-3 more appeared. It seems to me that if we had 70+ flies on board at once, we would have seen more than a few at a time. The only other possibility was that they were flying in over the course of the afternoon for the funeral...but we were over 50 miles from shore. What sayest thou?

Finally, in late afternoon, Leigh noticed dolphins..and dolphins...and more dolphins. There were probably 70 babies swimming, and leaping towards Moonbeam. In all of our years of sailing the high seas, and cruising around Florida waters, we have never seen so many, all practicing their leaps...3-4 feet into the air. It was exhilarating.

Obviously, we're back online. We were having online DTs while we made out way to Italy. We arrived in a small town called Cotrone. We had no sooner tied up when 'everyone' appeared: Franco who could meet all of our needs (the usual fuel, water, and electric) as well as a taxi service to get Phil and Leigh to the bus so they could catch their flight to Rome, an agent who could run interference to clear us into the country, a wine service to get us local wines, reservations at a restaurant, etc, etc, etc.) Once settled in, we walked a few miles in beastly heat to get our SIM cards. That was the easy part. We couldn't get all of our service going, so we had to walk back again this morning to finish the process. (This seems to be a recurring theme.)

We did have a lovely dinner at the rooftop restaurant at the marina. Ken likes this pic better than a pic of a pile of flies. Sometimes the Captain prevails. We bade a fond farewell to Phil and Leigh. Now, Ken and I will be sailing Moonbeam around the boot and up to Rome.