We never planned on staying in Sarande, Albania for four weeks, and yet, there we were. We arrived after that long lumpy passage from Sicily, and the first week was spent recovering, socializing with neighboring boats, and visiting the local sites. The second week involved a lot of back and forth with authorities and agents in Montenegro to resolve cruising permits before we entered those foreign waters. The third week winds weren’t quite favorable, and the boat suddenly required alot of attention. Then the vicious storm Daniel hit Greece, Turkey, and Libya (where tens of thousands of people died in floods) and kept us pinned as the storm kept sucking the winds down from the north. We later learned about the weather condition called an Omega block, consisting of two low pressure systems pinning a center high pressure system and remaining stationary (picture the Greek letter omega).
As frustrating as it was, it meant we stayed for the local beer festival, and heard two absolutely fabulous musical artists. The first was Xhesika Polo, a young star from Albania who made it as far as the final three on Albania’s version of American Idol. Her music was great, and her covers had the crowds dancing everywhere. She performed a wonderful medley in tribute to Tina Turner. She had everyone singing along to ‘Bella Ciao’. Then she started with traditional Albanian songs and the crowd transformed. A serpentine-like line formed, the leader waving a white scarf. This was the Napoloni. With timed steps, the line zigged and zagged amongst each other as more and more people joined. We didn’t have the footwork to participate, but sat back and watched as hundreds of people danced and sang the night away. The following night we were treated to Gipsy Groove, a ska band from Kosovo. Very very different from Xhesika, but once again, so fun to dance to. I’m really hoping we might see both again some time this winter while we’re in this part of the Med.
Unfortunately our luck from this season started to run out and the boat started acting up. The wind generator stopped performing, and with shorter days we get less from the solar panel. Combine that with a fridge that was spiking in its draw, our new batteries weren’t keeping up and we had to run the engine periodically. We defrosted the fridge (a LOT of ice had built up), took some refrigerant out of the system, and rebooted everything – this seems to be working. Our propane is getting precariously low (the stops along the Med where we thought we could refill the tanks didn’t pan out), so we bought a small stovetop, stand-alone burner along with some small tanks to get us through the season. The woodwork on the boat had taken a beating, so we did some varnish work to tide us over. The foot pump decided to spring a leak, which was resistant to repair, so we had to switch over to using the pressurized pump. And the water pump on the dinghy needed replacing, which was an all day project that involved alot of four letter words coming from Trip. To top things off we managed to drag our anchor during a gusty day (30 knot puffs) and had to re-anchor (whew, we were on board when it happened). Needless to say we were getting cranky and it was time to move on.
And yet it may have been fate that kept us there. On the day before we were prepared to leave, as Johan was taking me by his dinghy to load up more water, I saw s/v Balena at anchor. We had met Gerret and Katrin two years earlier in Block Island, and joked that we had been chasing them across the Atlantic and throughout the Med for those two years. They were on their way to Italy to meet up with their son, but had dropped anchor in Sarande for a few days and we had a lovely catch up over dinner,
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