Crossing the Black Sea

 Tuesday Aug 30 we left Constanta behind us and crossed the Black sea.
The Black Sea is not huge but with dimensions like 600 X 200 nautical mile still a considerable body of water to cross.
The weather promises to be good for the crossing but even so we installed the storm windows and hauled out the life raft and put it in the cockpit ready to launch in the unlikely event that we had to abandon ship.

 It was not long and we had a pod of dolphins welcome us the the black sea.

They stayed with us for quite a while and these three put on quite a performance.

 The crossing was 180 nm and took 25.5 hours.

We left at 09.30 and before we knew it, daylight faded and we witnessed a beautiful sun set. 

 All through the crossing we saw at least one large ship, and sometime two or three. But when we came closer to Istanbul we saw 15 other ship's on the AIS screen beside our self within 9 nm . 

The entrance to the Bosphorus and only 14 nm to go before we are in Istanbul.