The plan was to check out of Montenegro as early as possible, since Shëngjin, Albania was a full day's sail from Tivat. First, though, I had to fill up with diesel.
I swung by the fuel dock and made eye contact with the attendant. He put his arms up to form an X and yelled "No diesel." Well, that wasn't good. My tanks were around 30% full, there wasn't going to be much wind over the next couple of days, and Albania isn't known for having fuel docks.
I called the agent helping me, and he found a fuel dock 40 minutes away that had diesel. About an hour and a half later, I was at the customs dock with full tanks, ready to check out of the country. At that exact moment, a cruise ship arrived and took precedence. So much for the early departure.
Just before 11am, I finally had my papers stamped and was on my way to Albania. I was glad to have full fuel tanks, since this first day involved 12 hours of motoring.
Shëngjin and Vlorë
I arrived in Shëngjin in the dark and dropped anchor. It's a small holiday town on the north coast of Albania. Fireworks, loud competing music from multiple locations, spotlights, and a colourful ferris wheel greeted me.
At 7:45 the next morning, I took the dinghy to a restaurant on the breakwater to meet Orion, a local agent I'd hired to help with arrival formalities. We had coffee while filling out paperwork, then walked to the police station to get it stamped and processed. Afterward we grabbed another coffee and talked about Albania.
By 10am I was back on the boat and heading south to Vlorë. It was another long day, and I arrived in the dark again, this time without the fireworks and spotlights, anchoring by 12:30am. This was going to be the pattern for the next few days.
In the morning I met with another agent, had him process my departure papers, and got underway as soon as the police station sorted out a tech problem.
Innocent Passage
It was now time to cross the Ionian Sea and invoke "innocent passage" through Italian waters.
A bit about the dance I was about to do: Italy is in the EU, so if I stop there, I'd start burning days on my Schengen visa. Malta is also in the EU, but if I hand over a "crew list," a document with details on the boat and everyone aboard, they'll stamp that instead of my passport, so it doesn't count against my Schengen clock.
Innocent passage is the right, under international law, to transit another country's territorial waters as long as you're actually just passing through, not stopping, anchoring, or entering port. I planned to anchor each night to sleep, which is technically a deviation from that. But everyone I asked said it should be fine as long as I wasn't going ashore. So that's what I did.
For four days I'd wake at 5am, watch an amazing sunrise, sail all day, watch the sunset, and drop anchor by 11pm. I had zero issues. I finished reading All Fours, which was wildly entertaining, got halfway through Night Circus, and watched a good chunk of Friends & Neighbors.
One day I had a few squalls to dodge. A squall is a sudden, short burst of strong wind, often with rain and sometimes lightning. They're easy to spot coming on radar. I altered course a few times to skirt around the worst of them and just caught some lightning on camera.
Malta
I sailed into Valletta, Malta just before sunset, pulled into a marina, and finally had a long, proper rest.
In the morning I walked to the police station, got my crew list stamped, and was told to come back 24 hours before leaving Malta to get it stamped again.
While in Malta I'm getting some work done on the boat. Some of the battens in my mainsail, the rigid rods that slide into pockets in the sail to hold its shape, have broken and need replacing, and part of my forestay, the cable and foil at the front of the boat that supports the mast and carries the furling headsail, needs replacing too. I also had a diver clean the hull and swap out some anodes, sacrificial blocks of metal that corrode in place of my underwater fittings, protecting them from galvanic corrosion.
I'll be here until the 22nd, when I'll be joined by two friends from Belgium, and we'll sail on to Sicily and Sardinia.