Moving north

Around these parts, it seems it's either calm or winds that blow from the north with an unpleasant chop and there are not a lot of bays or islands to tuck into along Albania's coast so there were some 50+ nautical mile days.

While at a protected spot, we watched the weather and then headed out when it called for light and variable breezes with motor and sail. Not unlike our days heading up the Red Sea. But at least here, safe spots seemed to be closer together.

After leaving Saranda, for the next few days we continued to move north up the coast, stopping the first night in a semi-protected anchorage at Qeparo Village (June 7th N40°03.005' E019°48.814'), and around the corner the next night at the much better protected Bay of Palermos (N40°03.194' E019°47.920').

We found a tight little cove in the south part of the Bay and anchored behind fish farm pens with a stern line to the shore. (The navy was kicking out a couple of other boats from the north part of the Bay.)

Stern line to shore

We took the dinghy ashore to visit the Ali Pasha Castle and another of many of his forts that he built to secure his hold on the territories in these areas about a couple hundred years ago. This one is still in excellent condition and used even up until the end of World War II.

The pirates' perspective

From Ali's perch

Strong winds were predicted in 2 days so we made a long day's run north with a breeze on the nose and short steep chop. We were headed for a protected cove we saw on our charts in the south end of the big Bay of Vlorë (N40°21.322' E019°24.388').

When we pulled up to the cove, we saw it was filled with fish farm pens and almost the whole cove was roped off. We jockeyed around the pens to the lee side of an old dilapidated concrete pier with menacing old broken rusty rebar sticking out like porcupine quills. To keep us off and the nose into the wind, we ran a line from the bow to the pier and we again ran a line to the shore right behind us and tied off on a tree.

We were snug as a plug to wait out the coming north winds. It was a quiet 2 days (except for the herd of cows - each with a bell that gave the sound of wind chimes as they moved about munching grass - and the bleating goats). Jordan did some cockpit painting.

Porcupine pier

On June 11th, we moved over to the Orikum Marina (N40°20.338' E019°28.404') about 3.5 nautical miles east and entering over depths of 2.8 m (we draw 1.8 m) where we Med-moored. Poor Sea Turtle needed a bath to wash off all the salt and some stainless scrubbing, not to the mention the crew. The Marina was easy to distinguish with its red castle-like buildings.