It had been a long day, but Italy was in sight at last. I weaved across the deck to start securing the fenders, ready for our final approach into the harbour of Chioggia. I could see the first green light marking the outer harbour wall, and a pale pink was starting to spread across the blue clouds on the horizon.

As I gazed around the line of breakwaters ahead, I noticed a fast launch speeding out through the entrance and turning in our direction. I bent my head to tie the fender, and glanced up again, expecting the boat to have turned to pass us. It hadn’t and it was speeding fast directly towards us, pounding the waves at it gathered speed. I glanced back at the helm. Hadn’t they seen us? We were hard to miss!

“Is it a police boat?” came the call from the helm. It didn’t look like one to me, I stared harder and saw grey and yellow, but no blue flashing lights, so I shook my head.

“Looks ordinary to me!”

A minute later, as we started to turn a little out of its path, it was even closer and suddenly there were blue lights flashing and shouts and gestures from the approaching boat. They were motioning us to move across away from the harbour entrance. I hurried to attach more fenders as the boat swung alongside us. The crew had ropes ready and obviously intended to come onboard or something. What had we done wrong? We’d only sailed 10 hours straight from Croatia, and it’s also in the EU… what was their problem?

Thankfully there were no guns being thrown around and after a rather bumpy hurried procedure, as the police launch attached itself to us, we became a floating raft, while they ‘politely demanded’ passports and papers and asked where we had come from. 

Then after the skipper handed over the documents, we waited and watched them flick through passports, scan them into their onboard computers and scrutinise papers… We all wondered what was next – would they need to search the boat for drugs or illegal immigrants? It seemed to be taking a long time and through the tinted glass of their cabin we could see them holding up passports and tapping in numbers on screens… all while we bumped and bobbed beside them in the waves.

One of the police crew members left to supervise the fenders and ropes and stop us all drifting onto the rocks beside the harbour wall, made conversation with the skipper, who luckily spoke a little Italian. Meanwhile, our crew members attempted to take surreptitious photos of the situation without getting arrested!

Half an hour later, the chief appeared from below and said all was in order and we could go. One of his crew looked up at the pink sky and said, “It’s beautiful!” I agreed, but thought, “Yes it is, but now please let us find the marina and get sorted before it’s dark!”

One positive from the surprise customs ‘check-in’ was that the police (who became friendly once they saw we weren’t smugglers) could point out exactly where to go to tie up in Chioggia and told us we didn’t need to go anywhere else to report our presence, it was all sorted and we were legally allowed to enter Italy.

At last, Venice was just around the corner…