A lot has happened over the past three weeks in Durrës, Albania, where I’ve been preparing for my 400 nm solo qualification sail. What was meant to be a one-week job turned into a full-time, three-week battle.

After my first 160 nm sail in force 7–8 winds, I discovered several issues on Pixel and even made a new windvane. Unfortunately, it didn’t perform as expected. I had to pull back after just 61 nm, trapped in light or no wind at all.

The off-season Adriatic isn’t friendly — it’s either dead calm or blowing over force 6. My only option for another attempt came during a narrow five-day weather window, even though my marina fees had already gone beyond budget.

Before the third attempt, I got a few much-needed tips from fellow sailors. Rajmund shared the dimensions of his windvane setup, and after a quick 30-minute call with Ian Nuts, we found the real problem — the arm that moves the trim tab was a few centimeters too short, and the angle between the vane plate and the arm was slightly off. Once corrected, it finally worked perfectly.

I set sail immediately, but once again, the weather had its own plans.
Day 1 started great — steady wind almost from behind, covering over 50 nm effortlessly. But soon the wind vanished. I spent two days in total calm, followed by another with light winds and confused swell from all directions. Then, at the beginning of Day 5, the wind turned against me — 35 knots from N-NE, exactly where I needed to go. I spent the rest of the day beating upwind through rough seas.

In total, I covered 268 nm on the last attempt, and 468 nm overall across all sails. I wanted to push further, but my marina budget was gone and the crane was already booked to lift Pixel out of the water. It was time to wrap up and prepare for the next stage.

One small technical note — I discovered that setting the Garmin tracker to 4-hour intervals causes it to skip a few miles with each update. Switching it to 2-hour intervals made it much more accurate.

Tomorrow, I’ll drive back home to Struga, Macedonia, take a proper rest, and start preparing for the next big leg — a 3,600 km drive to Lisbon with Pixel on the trailer, ready for the Atlantic.

https://live.garmin.com/erdalluso?fbclid=PAZnRzaANfazlleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABp8Vp9pP1bK0DvM0FSxH2hr8fM3QmLIzslb0uQv_w5wQCFUAV-6oHMUAuei1u_aem_zJACmi5zxuniYx3RyMcnng

I forgot to stop tracking after finish immediately so the time is longer for few hours 🙂