Budva to Corfu – Our first overnight journey!

After going to Montenegro and finding that you need to buy a vingnetta for a mere 175Euros and then you get to pay for the marina, or in the case of Croatia or Montenegro, for the privilege of anchoring on your own anchor and chain, we decided to go directly to Greece from Montenegro. We had originally planned to do an overnight to Brindisi – about 120 miles from Montenegro, then down the coast of Italy to Otranto – about 30 miles, then over to Corfu in Greece in about a 40 mile shot. After paying the 175 Euros in Montenegro we decided that Corfu was only 140 miles directly – so why not cut out the same vingnetta fee in Italy and go directly to our destination.

We carefully charted out what we needed to do and decided to leave Budva by 11am. Actually we gave ourselves a few timed options – we power at about 8 knots on fast cruise – and that will have us into Corfu (Gouvia Marina where you can clear Greek Customs) at about 10am. At a 6 knot pace, we’ll be there at 2pm, so let’s leave at 11:00. So, we go to exit Budva – which truly is a beautiful place – at 8:30. We did a little marketing and we arrived at Carina (Customs) at 9am – and were told to return at 10. We did so and it took most of an hour to fill in a crew list, check our passports and extort a couple bottles of wine from us. [I’ll let Marina comment on that one]

We got back to the boat, lifted the engine off the dinghy, and for the first time hoisted the dinghy aboard using our electric winch. Much to our surprise and delight, it was fast, easy and it actually fit on deck. If any sailor is wondering whether the $4K for an electric winch is worth it, they should try to manage some of the loads a 50 footer and you’ll quickly become an advocate of electric power.

We had considered cruising down the coast of Albania but small things like underwater mines, endless bureaucracy, difficulties in foreign yachts being impounded or supplies being removed deterred us. While we have been told it is much better than it used to be … after customs in Montenegro and Croatia, we wanted to move into more mainstream Europe for a while.

The weather on departure day was beautiful – but not a breath of wind. By that I mean that the wake of our sailboat was the biggest wave in the Adriatic that day. Like many times already on this adventure, we were the salmon swimming the wrong way … and the only boat making the trip south – lots of boats heading north but only us heading to Greece. So, we put it on fast cruise, got Otto (the Autopilot) to do most of the steering.

Dusk came at 7pm and it was beautiful. We also discovered that there is a huge amount of ship traffic at night – makes sense, they travel at night and load/unload during the day. Anyway we now have a new best friend – RADAR. We could look out 10-15 miles, figure out the boats that were factors and then could track them with Mark-1 Eyeball as we went by. So we continued our fast cruise 8.0-8.4 knots depending on the current, for 12 hours. In the late afternoon, on someone’s watch other than mine, we ran over the only stick/log we have encountered in the Adriatic – there just isn’t that much wood! After that we were a little more vigilant and at dusk we nearly hit a crab pot so we slowed down to our slow cruise of 6.8Knots and carried on until 3am.

At this time we were all getting a little tired, and probably didn’t have our best decision-making hats on. Anyway it turns out there was a big fire in Albania and the smoke and ash was everywhere. We kept smelling something burning, the exhaust was making a lot of smoke and we thought we had might have a fire onboard. We immediately shut off the engine, and went on a search around the boat for problems – the engine, the refrigerator, the bow thruster, the electrical panel, the water heater, the bilge pumps, water pumps – opened up every bedroom and searched every compartment. The smell was outside not in. We suspected that we might have been smelling a fire from somewhere else but prudence made us shut down all equipment until we could verify it in the light. So we pulled out the sails and over the next three hours made just over ½ mile. During this time when we had no speed on, we were regularly passed by freighters, ferries and cruise ships. The RADAR is slaved to the other instruments and it got confused because we were stationary … it didn’t know which way was up … so we got quite confused and concerned about how traffic was reacting to us. If only we had a 5 knot breeze … the biggest wind during this time was 2.2 knots – on the nose too so we were 70 degrees off our target course.

At around 6:15 it was light enough to fire up the engine and look at it – though the brownish/orange fog clouds off of Albania were a giveaway that they had been burning something and we were probably OK. We started up the engine and were off and running. Unlike the day before we were on our slow cruise of about 7 knots – we have three modes: slow – 2000 RPM and about 6.5-6.8 knots, mid – 2500 RPM – about 7.2-7.5 knots, and fast 3000RPM – 8.2-8.4 knots. The challenge with the fast cruise is that it is much louder than the other two … and that gets to be a wee bit annoying after a while. We had 50 miles to go but the difference in noise from 8.2 to 7.2 knots is quite overwhelming. At 7:45 I ran out of energy and Ross woke up and ran the boat for the next couple of hours – save for a quick turn he made at 8:00am that got me out of bed and on deck in seconds wondering what the problem was.

Anyway, the rest of the morning was absolutely beautiful weather – with no wind again. We powered past Albania – being careful to remain 15 nautical miles off its shoreline at all times, entered Greek waters and caught sight of Nisos (the Island of) Othonoi– we’re in Greece Baby! Unfortunately, it’s still 35 miles to go to get to the Marina at Gauvia .. so we had another 5 hours to enjoy it. After doing an all nighter we found we needed a number of cat-naps when you’re tired …. So that’s what everyone did.

I checked into the country – through the Port Police, and then went to get Marina and the kids so we could go to the actual Customs office in downtown Corfu City. Unfortunately for me, two cruise ships were loading up ready to go when I arrived and they asked me to come back later (after they learned we were Canadians)…. Reminds me of a joke my Dutch friend Marcel told me – “Q- How do you get 25 Canadians out of a swimming pool on a hot sunny day? A. “Ask them to please leave the pool.” They know we’ll be nice and not complain … though in my experience the worst thing to do to a customs officer is to be cranky with them.

When we arrived we called Gauvia marina on Channel 71 and ask for a place for the evening and they direct us to a slip and I head off to figure out the Byzantine way of entering Greece with a boat. First stop is the Port Authority – they offer me a piece of paper that lets me go to Customs and Passport control. We then piled in a taxi to the downtown Cruise Ship terminal for customs and passport control. The customs officer gives me a Transit Log for 30 Euros that lets us visit up to 50 locations in Greece over the next six months – way cheaper than the 120 week long Vinjetta from Montenegro or the one-year $400 permit for Croatia. Next up is the Passport control. Now back to the port office to where we expected to pay taxes amounting to about 360 Euros and we were assessed a tax of 0.80 cents - go figure. Apparently our fee to stay in a harbour is 0.80 Euros a day … a little better than the 20-40 Euros we got nicked when we were in Croatia or Montenegro.

Gauvia is a nice marina, humungous – something like 600 berths or 2-3 times the size of Fisherman’s Cove in West Vancouver. They had a beautiful pool, a couple of restaurants, an excellent Marine Store, and an OK grocery, and of course a fuel dock. We went out for dinner but had one of the worst meals – actually I think it was the worst meal, we have had on the trip. When 3 of 4 of us didn’t finish it and don’t want it wrapped up, that should tell the chef something. The next day we lounged by the pool, used the free Internet service, and generally laid about. Checkout time was 2pm but we left at 3:30, got a few hundred litres of fuel to replace all that we used since Croatia. To give you an idea of the amount of powering, we put 45 hours on the engine from Split to Gauvia. Research we have done tells us that this time of year it is calm nearly 30% of the time. As Brian Moorhouse said, “there will be times when you’ll go 5 miles out of your way just to get some wind.” At the time I was skeptical, now I can see how that would happen.

Anyway, we’re safe here in Greece and looking forward to the next phase of our trip.