Hello Greece (Terry)

We just spent a few days in Preveza, where we checked into Greece.  It is easy to see why employers shun the Mediterranean and choose the Northerners.  One giant cockup is a nice way of putting it.  No s.o.b. knows what they’re doing, they just make it up as they go.  The Customs Office uses handwritten ledgers and the old dot-matrix printers because they still use idem paper!

They tie their files together with Legal Tape.  Unbelievable.  We had to go there first to get a form, then take that form back across the bay to the Port Police, who put a stamp on it, then take it back to Customs who issued us with our Cruising Log.  Costs €30.  Good for 50 ports and 6 months.  Then we had to take that back again to the Port Police and pay €15 for the harbour.  They were busy telling a Canadian that he owed them €866 even though he had his boat in the Cleopatra Marina for the season, on the hard.  He was pissed off because no-one told him and also he didn’t have the money.  I could see a plan forming in his brain – Italy in an overnighter!

Then a Port Police lady tried to explain to me the “Tax” for cruising in Greece.  They tried to bring this in years ago for everyone but the EU Commission in Brussels told them it was illegal.  So they dropped it for EU boats but they kept it for foreigners because their governments didn’t complain.  It is not written down anywhere, it is not law, it is not regulation, it just “is”.  It is (for us) 12metres by 1 Trimester by €14.67 plus VAT at 23%, or about €204 for three months.  OK, so far so good.  I don’t mind paying that for free harbours, waste disposal etc etc.  But then dopey tried to tell me that for the 2^nd three months the fee came to €866 and the calculation was the same but instead of 1 Trimester it is 2.  OK, my maths is a bit oldish but the total comes to €410 or something, not €866.  She’d just finished arguing with the Canadian and told him he owed €866 so it must have stuck in her mind.  Apparently Customs collect this “unwritten tax” when you hand back your Cruising Log. €70 a month to cruise through Greece is ok by me, but not the €866 figure.  If that applies, we’re out of here before the 3 months is up and into Turkey.

Preveza was nice – lots of great simple restaurants in little back alleys.  Can’t get our Vodafone to work – bought a Vodafone dongle (only €21 here) but the card wouldn’t connect.  However, it will connect if I put it in my Wind Italy dongle (unlocked) and connect to the Vodafone Greece 3G network.  How does that work?

Preveza is the mouth of a large inland type sea – goes for 18 miles (nautical) with towns and cities on it.  Apparently it is full of sea life, with dolphins, fish, turtles all over.  There are anchorages everywhere so we’ll probably come back this way and stay.  A large-ish turtle came past the boat one morning and had a look at us.

 

 

It is where Octavian, who became Augustus Caesar, fought Mark Antony and Cleopatra in the battle that settled the Civil War that began when Julius Caesar was assassinated.  The battle site where the galleys fought is where we motored in through the channel.  The site of the Battle of Actium is just over the water way on the other side of the peninsula.  You can see it quite easily from the town dock.  There used to be a ferry across there (it’s only about 400 metres) but now they have a tunnel under the entrance from one side to the other.

We walked around Butrint in Albania last week, along streets that Julius Caesar himself walked in – they’re stone roads, only a few feet wide, and they lead from the town gates to places he would have gone to, like the theatre etc.  Feels strange when you stop to think about it.  Then we were tied up a matter of 200 meters from where Cleopatra’s royal barge was tied up (Octavius was a few miles north)

In Preveza, there wasn’t much built in those days and the armies simply camped out.  Octavius built a new city called Nikopolis to celebrate his victory and we went to that museum yesterday.

The food in Preveza’s restaurants is simple and good.  Greek salad is usually €5 and comes with a massive thick slice of Fetta on the top and superb tomatoes.  Always very nice, as the land around Preveza is fertile and the locals know how to grow stuff.  Another common dish is Beetroot salad, just simple boiled beetroots cut up with olive oil and vinegar.  The Grilled Fetta is very nice – it is not crumbed or anything like that, it is just slices of tomato with chunks of Fetta laid over it and put under the grill – it part-melts and the tomatoes heat up.  Very tasty.

It’s Pepper season now so these are everywhere.  The Greeks stuff them with cheese (so do the Albanians) and then grill them so the cheese melts.  Excellent.  Meat is usually small chunks or strips cooked on an open fire.    It is very easy to find stuff to like here.  The Greek beers are excellent – Fix, Alfa, Fisher are all good.  Mythos is made by Carlsberg and I find that a bit on the sweet side.  My favourite is probably Fix.  They do a Fix Dark, and there were some in the fridge, but this is summer so it can wait until winter.  Last night we had dinner in “The Mermaid” or “The Captain”   They didn’t seem to know what to call themselves.  There was a traditional Greek band playing in the alley – two guys and a girl singer.  It was very, very good music, and all the Greeks were singing along, even the ones who were just walking through on their nightly Passage.  The Greeks call theirs a Perpato, the Italians call theirs a Passegiata, the English call theirs a Promenade, which they pinched from the French anyway.  I guess the Australian equivalent would be Bog Laps.

We were on the Town Dock, side-to, and lots of people come down to fish at night (some during the day, too).  We were down below the night before last when we heard an almighty roar that sounded like a huge windstorm arriving.  The boat wasn’t moving so it wasn’t that and we raced upstairs to see what on earth it was.  It was a massive school of sardines leaping out of the water onto the dock – obviously penned in by dolphins.  There were thousands on the dock and people were grabbing nets full or handsful or buckets full.  This happened three times in about ½ hour.  The third time they were around our boat and the sound of them hitting the hull was deafening.  Some things you wouldn’t believe if’n you didn’t see them.

 

We left Preveza early and motored on down to the “island” of Lefkas.  It is only an island because they’ve cut a channel through one part and stuck a bridge over it.  It’s called the Lefkas Canal and it goes for miles.  There were about 5 of us north-side waiting for the bridge to open on the hour.  Southbound traffic has priority but the idiots on the south heading north didn’t seem to have bothered to read their transit rules and were charging up the waterway.  I was in the lead of the southbounds and I was not all that impressed so I just motored ahead and made them stick very closely to their side of the channel.  It was a nice motor, with no wind, and we came out into the bay that has the Island of Skorpio in it.  Lots of yachts (charter ones) doing laps to see it but we didn’t bother.  The number of yachts here is staggering.  The marinas are forests of masts and the waterways are busy but not clogged, but it’s not July yet and also we are still in Northern Greece.  You cannot afford to relax as we are used to, with both of us having a little lie down in the cockpit for half an hour or so.

 

We arrived at our destination of Meganisi by about midday and anchored with a line tied to the shore to keep us straight.  Carol jumped in and swam it ashore and then I hauled it tight on a winch.  There were probably about 15 boats in there, 8 or so swinging on the anchor and the rest of us tied to a tree or a rock.  Carol spotted a discarded anchor below us in about 18’ of water.  I was going to try to retrieve it, although there must be a reason why it was cut free – maybe it’s stuck too hard?  More likely it is off a charter yacht and they simply didn’t know how to free it and cut it off.  I would have liked it as we would then have 5 anchors.  Our friend Dave Renoll (Captain Dave of R&R Sailing School) says you can’t have too much chain and you can’t have too many anchors.  At $450 a shot for the ones for our boat, a freebie would have been good.  However, we swung south in the night and ended up a long way from where it was and it was all too hard.

It’s a nice little anchorage – however, the round-island road was about 50’ behind us and there was a wedding on.  All over the Med, a wedding means a line of cars with various ribbons on them driving nose-to-tail and sounding their horns off.  As this is a small island, they all did two laps just for fun.  And they don’t ease up on the horns.

We played dominoes for a while and drank the last of the Sicilian red.  Opened a Calabrian red.  Beat Carol in dominoes thanks to one and one-only massively awful round she got.  We were level pegging for ages until the hand-from-hell turned up for her.  Finished dinner (veal cutlets from Italy) with mashed potato.  Fireworks on at the tavern over the anchorage, with folk music and probably dancing, though we couldn’t see it up that high).

So, how’s Greece you ask?  Well, they are nice sophisticated people who love a good time and east simply and well.  They are as pleased as all getout when I tell them I have a Greek Great-great grandfather. (Patrioti?)

From Meganisi we motored on down intending a shortish day of about 28 miles.  However, out planned anchorage had Katabatic wind pouring off its slopes and we couldn’t stop.   We went from zero wind to 35knots in a matter of half a mile.

So it was off to port and into the Gulf of Patras.  We found our way into a tiny dredged harbour called Kalydonos   We were going to tie to the town dock but couldn’t work out the depth so we stayed off and anchored.  Very pleasant except that there is a mountain behind the town that is awe-inspiring.  It is massive and it’s steep and it’s right “there”.  Any rocks come off, they drop on town.

 

 

We motored again the next day to Aigio, a town that has seen better days.  There is a new commercial wharf which has yet to be finished.  The ferry shown on the charts no longer runs.  The trains no longer run along the waterfront and the train sheds are empty with a rock precisely in the middle of each window.  We anchored tucked up tight inside the tightest bit of the bay about 30’ from shore and rowed in.  We first wanted to try to walk up to town but it was designed to keep barbarians away and was a mile uphill.  So we wandered along the bay to the yacht club and back and found a nice little restaurant playing some delightful music – Manos Hatzidakis – and we spent a pleasant hour or so there listening, eating and having a beer and a wine.

 

In the morning we up anchored and off to just short of the Corinth Canal, about 5 miles from the entrance to a place called Assos.  No chance of getting in to the marina there – some kids were jumping off the rocks at the entrance and standing up!  So we anchored in about 12’ of water in what we thought would be a pleasant spot.  However, the inshore was marshy and we were visited by mosquitoes galore.  Not a nice night.

 

At 8 the next day, we headed for the Canal.  We called up a mile away and were told to wait with the others gathered and almost at once all 7 of us were allowed through.  Good timing.  The Canal is about 3.6NM long and takes about 45 minutes to transit as there are sections where you must go very slowly to stop the sides falling in.  At the Eastern end, you tie up and go pay – for us, it was €203, which makes it the most expensive canal in the world per mile, but what it saves in time is worth it.  We refueled and headed to a small island 20 miles from Piraeus for what promised to be a pleasant anchorage but turned out to be a little bumpy.

In general, from Albania to just shy of Athens was a very easy journey, with lots of yachts north of Lefkas but barely a boat in sight in the Corinth Canal end.  The second last day before Assos we saw only two fishing boats and two cargo ships in the whole day.

 

We left the island and motored into Piraeus’ Zea Marina at midday or so the next day.  Met by a chappy in a dinghy, who landed and helped us to dock, this was a pleasant entry to one of the world’s great harbours – the AIS screen was lit up with over 50 contacts just in the port environs.

Piraeus and the islands up next…..