Greek Customs Mystified and Demystified ... again

A couple of years ago I wrote a post on how to deal with Greek Customs. Well, there are few new wrinkles.

Arriving by Boat

If you arrive by boat then you visit Port Police first to get the crew list processed. Basically it’s a list of crew names, positions and their passport numbers.

Then you go to Customs and get your transit log, clear the crew into the country with their passports, and then you take your Transit Log back to the Port Police to be stamped with your last port of entry and your next port of entry. 

The wrinkle is that now the Greeks have put a tax on cruising sailors. For us it works out to be about 4 Euros a day payable in advance for the number of months you plan to stay in the water. You need to apply for this online and have a primary piece of ID as part of your password. Then you decide what you want to pay, print it, go to a bank or a post-office to make a payment, (cash of course) and then back to Customs to prove that you paid, and you’re done.

Arriving by Plane with the Boat in Bond

This is our typical scenario, where I put the boat in bond by visiting the Customs and handing over the Transit Log (which I have screwed up before costing basically 1000 Euros in taxes … doh, and you’re welcome Greece for my donation to your fiscal improvement fund). Once I get to Customs I have the crew passports and they stamp my Transit Log, I go to Port Police next for another stamp and sometimes a new crew list, and away we go, sometimes paying a fee, sometimes not.

The new procedures add the TEPAH (cruising tax) to the mix. I had received an email from Cleopatra Marina that the implementation was delayed — but it was only for a month. This didn’t register with me. You must pay the tax before you get your transit log. You must do it online …so there I was at the Customs building a half mile down a road on a quay, no internet.

New Plan: get the SIMs for the phones first, because we need communications regardless. Luckily I had brought my PC, I found a coffee shop with internet, had a cappuccino and proceeded to apply for an TEPAH application, received an email with a link, filled in a pretty complex form from the link, submitted the completed form, received an email with a PDF invoice for 238.50 Euros but had no way to pay online.

Plan Revision: Tara’s printer gave it up last year so we needed a new one so … where is a technology store … found one, how much is the printer? 50 Euros … OK but I need to know it will work with my Mac, can we set it up?  I’ll just do a test print of this “random” PDF file with my TEPAH invoice. It works, re-pack the printer and head off looking for a bank. Found a bank … and it’s air conditioned. Did I mention from the shuttle drop off point to Customs to Vodafone to the Printer store to the bank is about 7 kilometers in 35 degree heat carrying a 10 Kilo backpack and a printer in a box with a 500 sheets of paper? I was sweating!

The bill must be paid in cash, of course ... it's Greece. Go to the cash machine, cross my fingers that it works .... YES! ... get the Euros, then pay the bill, get the TEPAH stamped and back to Customs. My Pro-forma invoice from the Marina Office at Cleopatra wasn’t sufficient so I call Cleopatra boat yard (smart to get my phone eh?) and have them email over a copy. Then I pull my new printer out of the box, plug it in the wall and and print my proof of insurance.

By this time the Customs officers were feeling a bit sorry for me and they sent me on my way with my Transit Log. Off to Port Police to get my stamp for 2019 and submit my crew list along with passport numbers,  and then into a cab back to Cleopatra — as the shuttle had left nearly 2 hours before. Meet Marina and Jessie at the boat an about ½ hour later we were in the water. Phew!