Time to check out of Italy
The Marinero completed the paperwork for us and called the Customs Officers to come to stamp our papers. It was all very quick and efficient. This was going to be a 96 nm passage with light winds and minimal swell. We left at 14.00 so we would arrive at Ubli on Lastovo to check into Croatia in the morning around 10.00 am.

The Mother of All Storms
At 19.00 we made some soup and decided to eat around 21.00 before settling into a 2 hour on 4 hour off watch system. Ummm.... Vic and I were on deck when we both saw lightning in the distance on our starboard side. We turned at right angles to it to see if we could tell which direction it was moving in. So now we were heading towards Albania in completely the opposite direction. The lightening was now on both sides. As the storm moved we turned back onto our track. The lightening was all around us and about 7 to 10 miles away, bolt lightning, sheet lightning and loud thunder claps.

We stayed calm and made a plan: we would go below watch the radar and AIS on our chart plotter and put all our iPads, IPhones, lap tops and of course our hand held electronic instruments into the oven; our Faraday cage. This would minimise any direct strikes to one person at a time. Jon and I were below, Vic was in the cockpit when there was a bolt and a bright flash overhead; the noise was deafening. I was watching the chart plotter and Njord circled in her own length twice. The autohelm had been knocked out by a stray current. At that point it started to rain and oh my was it heavy. Vic went behind the helm and had to hand steer. After fifteen minutes the rain stopped and the autohelm started working, phew! No direct hits and no Tom & Jerry scared cat hair dos, thank goodness. For the rest of the night we had sheet lightening on both sides of Njord until sunrise. The wind got up and the waves were at least two meters high, very confused and not all in one direction. It was impossible to sleep but we did keep to the watch system.

After sunrise at 05.30 ish the lightning stopped and we motored on under a reefed genoa to Ubli on the island of Lastovo.