Sarande – Wednesday 4 July 2018

As planned we were up at 5:30 and slipped the mooring just before 6am.  We had a bit of a scare on the way out.  As we left the pontoon and were in the middle of the harbour Richard suddenly rushed below and told me to shut the engine off.  It turned out the no water was getting through the engine and it would shortly overheat.  But a crisis was averted.  It was caused by Richard clearing out the filter last night and he hadn’t quite put it back properly.  A small adjustment and we were on our way.

The weather was odd.  At first we thought it had just turned very cloudy, but it turned out to be a sea mist which followed us for about ¾ of the way here.  The visibility was down to 3-5 miles and it was quite cool.  But by 1pm that had changed and the sun came out and it got very hot and sticky.  We had a bit of wind from behind so Richard put up the sails and we motor sailed giving us another half a knot in speed to reduce the time of the journey.

We had made contact with the agent we used before here who said he would find us a space.  Of course as we approached the harbour the wind got up to 16 knots just in time for us to take the sails down!  But we managed and got in touch with the agent’s girl who was going to put us in a berth.  We are more or less where we were last year next to the ferry terminal in an alongside berth.  There are quite a few other boats who came in after us.  We all have to leave by 8:30am tomorrow because a cruise liner is coming in and they use these piers for their tenders.  That is OK with us as we want to get to Corfu soonest, before all our water runs out!

The agent checked us in and we got ready to go into town for dinner.  We both managed a reasonable wash with the water we put in the bucket.  So we felt a bit less jaded when we left the boat.  We decided to take the agent’s girl’s advice about a restaurant and walked well along the front to what seemed to be the most popular restaurant about. It had a lovely position, but the menu was boring.  Anyway it let us spend the last of our Leke.

The agent is coming at 8am tomorrow with our clearance.  We can then leave the berth and go and anchor for an hour to have breakfast before we leave.  We shall see how we get on.  We are a bit blocked in by other boats at the moment.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Venice - Thursday 24 May 2018

Well, we are still here in Venice and it doesn’t look like we will be able to leave before Sunday (though Saturday is still a possibility).  The weather has been hot and sunny and is getting to me. I fell asleep twice today! The saga of the works goes on.  We waited most of the morning for anyone to turn up and then walked the ½ mile to the office to find out what was happening when we were told the engineer and rigger were on the way to the boat.  So Richard rushed back to the boat and I loaded up the Times on my ipad. The only internet here is in the hotel so we have to come down to do anything. The upshot is that the water pump has to be replaced for a less powerful one.  The engineer is coming to do that tomorrow morning. Will we be charged for this twice?!  We can see another argument looming. The rigging in another problem.  After he put the main up Richard found that he could not rig the reefing lines.  We have had problems with them and had asked for that to be loo
Read more

Shengjin (Albania) – Thursday 28 June 2018

Image
Well our plans to check out of Montenegro didn’t quite go to plan.     We woke up to the alarm at 6am and went to deal with customs and the immigration police at about 6:45.     The customs office appeared to be closed, but when they heard us at the door they opened it and took our piece of paper from the Harbour Master.   However when we got to the police they told us they do not open until 7am and we had to bring the boat around to them.     By the time we did all this it was about 8am before we left Bar harbour.     The weather forecast was better but there were still problems.  The wind has dropped but there is nearly a metre swell in the sea.  I took a pill before we set out in the light of this.  With the sea state and the late start we abandoned the plan to go straight to Durres and headed to Shengjin instead.  In fact the journey was not that bad.  The sea settled down after a couple of hours.  The main problem is that it became very cloudy and cold. I had to put on long t
Read more

Trogir – Monday 11 June 2018

Image
So it is Happy Birthday Richard.   I got up very early and went to the shop here in the marina.     It was surprisingly well stocked.     I was able to buy a selection of breakfast pastries and some other stores I had been looking for. We had breakfast in the cockpit and then did the domestic stuff.  I first sorted out the laundry to take to the laundry lady around the corner. She will have all the sheets towels and underwear washed and dried by this afternoon.  So I have no laundry worries for another three weeks at least. We then made our way to the other side of town to the fish market.  That was a disappointment.  There was very little there and most of it was sprats (apparently a local specialty).  We could see no live lobsters or crayfish.  We finally found someone in a larger unit and all she had was frozen lobsters and then at a price equivalent to about £75 a kilo.  Richard rejected that.  So no lobster dinner today. But what we did find was a very good outdoor market
Read more