The electric soup

We had a peaceful night at anchor. earlier in the evening. Shortly before sunset, I commented to Margaret that there was a halo around the sun. I remembered this was a weather feature that was a harbinger of something but I could not remember what exactly. My feeling was it was something bad, but the evening was totally still though there was a murkiness to the Northern sky.
In the morning all was well, a light dry wind blew across the anchorage and it was warm. The forecast on the Navtex and from  Dubrovnik radio was SE 8-18knts, possibility of local rain and thunderstorms. To put this in context thunderstorms are forecast every day as a default. And indeed they do occur everywhere without warning. They are usually sort lived and can be ridden out or avoided.

We raised the anchor and headed out of the fjord towards the open sea. Coming round the various headlands en route showed the expected wind changes in strength and direction. As we sailed out into the main Adriatic the breeze settled to a South Westerly 15 knot,  perfect for a reach to our destination of Bar, some 35 nm to the South East. We were accompanied by the three masted tall ship, the Jadran, shown in the previous photos from Tivat. This is a Navy training ship and I was hoping they would get the sails up.

The wind dropped and then changed direction to a Westerly. We then noticed some significant murkiness ahead of us. the Jadran was heading in the same general direction as us but was taking a route further off shore.

The murkiness ahead darkened and it became clear this was a storm developing. Lightning and thunder started within the storm cell dead ahead. We took avoiding action and turned  to starboard and motored away from the storm in the company of the Jadran, which took similar avoiding action. My strategy at that point was to stay close to the Jadran as it's huge masts would surely be a better lightning conductor than us.

We managed to skirt the edge of the storm, getting only torrential rain and a bit of a buffeting up to 35 knots. At this point the Jadran reversed course and headed back to the Bay of Kotor. I commented to M. that they might know something we don't.

By this time we were some 15nm into the passage near the entrance to Budva. There are only two harbours on this coast before Albania, Budva and Bar. Neither are sheltered from a South Westerly  and the approaches would be hazardous in a breaking swell. Particularly Budva which has a very difficult narrow approach between shoals.

Storm dodging

Over the next two hours we took multiple avoiding actions to try to escape from a series of storm cells heading our way. It was a bit scary but actually very instructive. Everything electrical was in the oven. I think M. would have got in too if she could have fitted.
I had read that if a storm is approaching, if the two sides of it maintain a constant bearing it is going to get you. This works in practice!

There seemed no end to these storm cells and the route to Bar was the murkiest aspect of the horizon. So we eventually decided the Montenegrin Navy probably knows a thing or two about local conditions and joined them in retreating back to the Bay of Kotor. This took a further 3 hours but apart from being a bit arduous was fine. During our return it became clear that the wind had gone from SW, to W to NW and N and then gone. Basically a small deep depression had blown through rather than conditions being due to the normal local storm cells that occur regularly and are much more short lived. We had big confused seas with swells of 1-2 metres plus waves breaking on the beam. However the boat stood up well to this and there was no problem.

Any way we just ended up where we started 8 hours after departure, tired but wiser.

We finally moored up in the the town of Herceg Novi at the head of the bay of Kotor, had an excellent meal ashore and I am now heading for my bunk.

Lessons learned. The Navy boys are more clued up than me. The boat and crew performed well. Adverse circumstances were not apparent in the broadcast  forecast. We had lost our own data access to forecasting and should pay for local access to this. However 24 hours earlier we had Wifi and all was OK.