After five days at anchor, I received an email from the agent in Sarande, Albania. She reported having space available at the dock. We wasted no time getting underway.

The Approach

There are fish farms and shoals around the coast and entering into the Sarande harbor. There is a cardinal marker. It says “Stay south of me”. We gave the coast a wide berth as we came south along the coast, keeping the land a good distance away on our Port side.

Port Marina

Once in the harbor, we contacted the Port Marina. They directed us to the small area where just a handful of private vessels can tie up. The rest of the platform area is for commercial ferry services.

That’s when they let us know, this dock requires us to use our anchor for the dockage. We’ve been accustomed to using what are called “lazy” lines. These are lines of rope anchored at some distance out in front of the dock, then lead back and are tied to the dock. Once the boat is sufficiently close, we throw our dock lines backward to the dockhand. They tie it off on a bollard. Then, the dockhand grabs the lazy line attached at the dock end and pulls it up to where we can reach it with a boat hook. We lead the line forward walking up the deck to the front of the boat. Usually, splashing silt and mud from the rope all over the deck as we go, but that’s another story. Once at the front of the boat, you pull the line tight and secure it around the forward cleat. This holds the boat from backing up into the dock due to wind and waves, etc.

In this case, here at the Sarande port, there are no lazy lines. What you need to do in this case is get the boat oriented correctly, stern to the dock, bow pointing out to the harbor. Begin backing up and at the right distance away, drop your anchor. The anchor is the mechanism the lazy lines would have been doing, holding us from backing into the dock.

This was our first time doing this. While it wasn’t perfect, I’m very satisfied with the job we did.