We never ever sail to a schedule. Did it twice and it was a disaster both times. Saying that this past summer we sailed around the Black Sea and had to get a visa for
Russia and we had to give them an entrance date. We spent a lot of time with
OpenCPN doing a general plan on where we would stop based on conditions on the BS such as lite to good winds and seas in the am and by noon tuck in as winds and seas up and very uncomfortable - so we planned on 25-35nm days and put
ports in on the chart. And we had 400nm to go before we got to the BS and wisdom is be out by end of Sept - So with planning we set our
Russia date as July 10 and with 29 days we knew when we had to leave. So we set sail in April and made the BS about when we wanted to but the sailing and winds were at a good angle so we just kept moving missing a few
ports we has scheduled and made ports we had not scheduled. But
weather kept us at the
dock in
Georgia so we could not make Russia on the 10 but had to wait 3 days and when we left we knew we had a 350nm sail to Odessa and kept watching the weather in the Western BS and knew a high probability of major blow so we left 3 days before our visa expired to beat the weather which we did as it came with 50k winds
as for leaving we were having a great time sailing down the western coast that we dismissed the conventional wisdom and wx did set in and we had small windows to move from port to port and the last run was designed to be a day sail to leave Bulgaria and sail to a Turkish port for an overnight then on to
Istanbul for check in but more weather was setting in so we did a long run to
Istanbul and had to run the Bosphorus in the dark (not highly recommended) but beat the weather. We did not get out of the Black Sea until very late Oct and missed some stops heading south to our winter port because of weather that had changed and storms were coming through on a more frequent basis
We are currently planning this summer and have a basic idea and now looking at miles potential ports of call distance between ports or
anchorages, what sights to see - we will plot all on
OpenCPN and then adjust as we move along - it is fluid plan that can be changed by such things as this port is terrible let's leave or wow we need to spend an other day or two
In the
Azores we went into one island for 2 days and found they had a small festival - St John - well small is an bit of an understatement - it lasted for 7 days and we stayed and had a great time --
Plan but be flexible