Sarande is a resort town in Albania just north of the Greek border. When are in the port you can see an island straight across the bay / channel and that is Kerkira / Corfu which we visited last cruise. The Albanian spelling of the name is more like Sarande with “.. on the top. As a lot of languages do not have letters with ” .. on the top it is often written as Sarande, Sarandes or Sarandee. The name in the navigational chart is spelled as Sarande and that is what we go by. The area has a long and troubled past and it was not until 1945 that a permanent own state was founded by communist freedom fighters of the 2nd world war.

The Resort -port of Sarande. At anchor the expedition yacht Axantha II. Available for a weekly charter of somewhere over 100,000 euros.  But is at least a yacht that can take some bad weather.

It remained communist and very much isolated until 1999 when it opened up more to the west. Since then going to Albania on a cruise has become more acceptable to travelers and now Sarande is considered the port that takes the overflow from other ports in the area. With the expansion of the cruise industry it will not be long before it is a full-fledged cruise call for many a company. Because of its ancient history and being a resort there is more than enough to do for every sort of cruise guest and that has been upping the guest ratings year by year, ever since we have been coming here.

The deep water anchorage at Sarande. We anchored as close to the deep water edge as was safely possible. The first yellow blip upwards of the ship is the yacht Axantha II as seen in the previous photos.

But it is still an anchor port. The water is deep and becomes shallow very quickly once past the small cape which is the end of a mountain ridge that protects the Bay from winds from the South West, up to the South East. It is just a pity that the afternoon winds and swell comes in from the West, and can freely reach the anchorage. To mitigate this they could built a dock here but it would mean a considerable re-organization of the port as the current small dock area (in use for Hydrofoils to Greece / Corfu and small coastal cruise ships) would have to be extended and then a 2nd pier constructed in the shallower area further inside the bay, to help the now displaced ferries and cruise ships and I do not see that happening very quickly.

It leaves every larger cruise ship (with a draft of more than 5 meters) anchoring right on the edge of the land and thus out of the protection of the mountain ridge. We did as well, and anchored today in 40 meters of water, what is deeper than normal for cruise ports, but we could not go further in the bay. Every ship likes to be deep in the bay as in the afternoon the wind normally breezes up, only to die down again after sunset. Also today, it became quite choppy in the afternoon and the captain had to keep a good lee by having the port side anchor down and pushing the stern towards the wind to keep a lee for the tenders. So one Azipod was continuously pushing & holding the stern against the wind while the por tside anchor prevented the bow from moving. Ashore there was no issue as the mountain range kept all the wind away from the dock area but also from the town.

That made it “nice & toasty” in port and my initial resolve of exploring Sarande dissolved quickly and I made a quick U-turn when I walked between the first houses. I knew that white paint reflects the warmth of the sun but I can now confirm that yellow paint does the same.  My next “resolve” will have to wait until a spring or autumn visit. Many of the families we have on board opted for the beach but quite a few of them (often urged by their children) came back after a few hours as it was “too toasty”. The kids had already figured out that being on a cruise ship gave them all the same beach fun but with the option of running back into the A.C coverage when needed.

Our “swimmer” who thought it was a bright idea to swim between the tenders to the ship. This photo was taken from the tender platform alongside, so he came quite close. I could not get a tender in the photo to show you how dangerous it was, as our well trained tender operators kept a safe distance and waited until the swimmer had a bright moment and recognized the peril he was exposing himself to.

The local boats, large and small where not exactly in compliance with the Rules of the Road and we even had suddenly a swimmer near the ship, who had come from the beach to have a look. The lunatic did not understand how dangerous it was what he was doing as there was some swell so he bopped in and out of view all the time and the tender drivers cannot see everything around their tender. Thus the helper inside has to keep a good lookout as well. Which one helper did in the most admirable way; by climbing on top of the tender, keeping the person continuously in sight and at the same time made his feelings crystal clear. I do not know how much Indonesian the swimmer would have understood, but the guests in the tender were quite impressed. After we drew the attention of the swimmer to the fact that there were two propellers under each tender, he got the message and swam back to the beach.

Tomorrow we are in Katakolon, which is just a bit further to the south. Here we will dock and right through the port/docking area runs an earth fault line. Not a fault line which causes earthquakes or volcanoes, but water that comes welling up with a large sulpher content. So the first impression of the guests walking off the gangway is often the smell of rotten eggs. After that it gets better quite quickly.

According to the latest cruise schedule we should be by ourselves but things do change. The weather won’t. It will be Sunny with 32oC / 89oF, no wind in town and zero change of rain.