We arrived in Corfu early in the morning and anchored of NAOK - the yacht club/Marina just south of the Castle in Corfu town. It felt like coming home being back in Greece!
We took the dinghy round to the (filthy) main harbour and then walked miles in sweltering heat to check in to Greece and the EU. The police who deal with incomers were busy processing a group of illegal immigrants so we cooled our heels for an hour until a nice young police-woman took pity on us, found the forms and started the process. The worst bit was trying to find passport control which turned out to be right at the far end of the huge harbour where the cruise ships dock.
We spent a few days in Lakka on Paxos where we met up with Skylark and then sailed down to Preveza and Vonitsa. We had intended to get our engine serviced in Levkas but we met Spyros in Vonitsa. He's an excellent engineer and a thoroughly nice chap who did a major service on our engine including sending the injectors off to Athens to be tested. He tried to fix the slight sea-water leak on the back of the engine which had been there for ages. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a failing weld on teh exhaust elbow. Lucky he looked as it could have failed catastrophically at any moment! He couldn't get a replacement and we had to get back to Corfu to be near the airport. He patched it up with epoxy putty for the three weeks until we could get back to Vonitsa.
We moored in Mandraki yacht club on the Northern side of Corfu Castle which we always enjoy. The location is spectacular, the price is reasonable, shelter is good enough and they are always friendly and helpful.
D went back to the UK for few days to see old friends from 4-Sight who had a re-union while L and Lucifer looked after the boat. Next day, John and Gill, D's brother & his wife, came out and we had a lovely couple of weeks revisiting some old haunts in the Ionian. We anchored off Preveza and hired car to drive John & Gill to Igoumenitsa to catch Corfu ferry to catch their plane back.
And so back to Vonitsa where Spyros welded the exhaust elbow. He wasn't happy that it was a proper solution so he advised us to get a new one when we reached Italy - and refused to take a payment for all his trouble!
We had a good weather window couple of days later so we went to check out of Greece in Preveza expecting a simple process. Unfortunately we hit a major chunk of bureaucracy. The port police there are headed up by a real jobs-worth and they spotted that our insurance certificate didn't have the explicit wording that they required - even though the coverage was more than 5 times the ammount required! They insisted that we couldn't check out until we had new insurance certificates - this even though we were checking out because we were leaving Greece in 6 hours! He even threatened to send a gunboat after us if we just left. Fortunately, Pantaenius were there usual helpful selves and e-mailed a certificate to the police as soon as we phoned them. Skylark was not so lucky though and had a stressful few hours until they could contact their insurance.
At 03:00 we weighed anchor and set off on the 3 day passage to Syracuse in Sicily in company with Skylark. Farewell Greece.
We took the dinghy round to the (filthy) main harbour and then walked miles in sweltering heat to check in to Greece and the EU. The police who deal with incomers were busy processing a group of illegal immigrants so we cooled our heels for an hour until a nice young police-woman took pity on us, found the forms and started the process. The worst bit was trying to find passport control which turned out to be right at the far end of the huge harbour where the cruise ships dock.
We spent a few days in Lakka on Paxos where we met up with Skylark and then sailed down to Preveza and Vonitsa. We had intended to get our engine serviced in Levkas but we met Spyros in Vonitsa. He's an excellent engineer and a thoroughly nice chap who did a major service on our engine including sending the injectors off to Athens to be tested. He tried to fix the slight sea-water leak on the back of the engine which had been there for ages. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a failing weld on teh exhaust elbow. Lucky he looked as it could have failed catastrophically at any moment! He couldn't get a replacement and we had to get back to Corfu to be near the airport. He patched it up with epoxy putty for the three weeks until we could get back to Vonitsa.
We moored in Mandraki yacht club on the Northern side of Corfu Castle which we always enjoy. The location is spectacular, the price is reasonable, shelter is good enough and they are always friendly and helpful.
D went back to the UK for few days to see old friends from 4-Sight who had a re-union while L and Lucifer looked after the boat. Next day, John and Gill, D's brother & his wife, came out and we had a lovely couple of weeks revisiting some old haunts in the Ionian. We anchored off Preveza and hired car to drive John & Gill to Igoumenitsa to catch Corfu ferry to catch their plane back.
And so back to Vonitsa where Spyros welded the exhaust elbow. He wasn't happy that it was a proper solution so he advised us to get a new one when we reached Italy - and refused to take a payment for all his trouble!
We had a good weather window couple of days later so we went to check out of Greece in Preveza expecting a simple process. Unfortunately we hit a major chunk of bureaucracy. The port police there are headed up by a real jobs-worth and they spotted that our insurance certificate didn't have the explicit wording that they required - even though the coverage was more than 5 times the ammount required! They insisted that we couldn't check out until we had new insurance certificates - this even though we were checking out because we were leaving Greece in 6 hours! He even threatened to send a gunboat after us if we just left. Fortunately, Pantaenius were there usual helpful selves and e-mailed a certificate to the police as soon as we phoned them. Skylark was not so lucky though and had a stressful few hours until they could contact their insurance.
At 03:00 we weighed anchor and set off on the 3 day passage to Syracuse in Sicily in company with Skylark. Farewell Greece.
