Durrës and Shëngjin

June 12th was a long day of motoring (10.5 hours) up the Albanian coast from Orikum to Durrës, the second to last port. It is the country's largest port where the big commercial inner harbour is sheltered behind breakwaters. It services large freighters and ferries and it's not set up for cruising yachts. So we tied up alongside the high concrete pier under the shadow of old towering Ganz cranes and tried to avoid smudging our hull on the hefty black tire bumpers (N41°18.287' E019°27.117').

There was a faceoff between Chanty sitting on the dodger and 3 large dockyard dogs that wanted a feline dinner. Apparently the large silos next to the cranes housed wheat so we were wary of rats about. Maybe Chanty could earn her passage fare!

Sharing with ships

Albania requires cruisers to do formal check ins at each main port that they stop at and an agent is required for paperwork. In Durrës, it was fast and efficient and all done on the boat. However the fees vary port to port and agent to agent so it can get expensive. Durrës cost us about $125 CAD.

However our agent was happy to relate some interesting history sparked by Jordan's many questions. Albania's lengthy communist control came to an end in the early 1990s. During that regime's control, their defensive military built 700,000 bunkers in tiers that line from the coast all the way up the mountains. The coastal waters were scattered with minefields and even though there were endeavours to eliminate them, our OpenCPN charts warn of areas of possible existence.

Durrës was simply a safe overnight mooring, so with no real interest there, we moved on in the morning for about 8 hours to Shëngjin, our last Albanian stop and official check-out port.

Shëngjin is also a commercial port. A little grimy with noticeably more rubbish, both in the water and on land. We tied up again to the concrete wall along with other commercial vessels where the agent greeted us (N41°48.399' E019°35.277'). He checked us in at his "office cafe" where Jordan was refreshed with a local beer. His service was not only a check in to this port but also a country check out as next stop was Montenegro the next day.

Dirty digs

Our short walk to town took us past smelly trash bins and along an unkempt street of general dinginess. The beach area in front of town was better, but this place, with no architectural or planning merits, will never make Conde Nast's Gold List (a travel magazine with lists of best)!

However it was nice to see a sand beach instead of the usual pebble beaches we have seen so far in the Med. The last sand we saw was in Egypt - the Europeans should have stolen some sand from there along with the artifacts!