Meeting up with Old Friends in Gouvia

You may recall that last year we had some difficulty extricating Tara from Croatia – because of a bank-loan on the holding company that owned the Kremik Marina, who owned the Charter-company that owned the boats (160 Million Euro note) … our boat wasn’t ready for export until September 2010. There were four of us in the same situation – the first one to clear was Marcel .. and thankfully he was there to provide us guidance as we might have gone starkers had we not had someone to lean on.

Coming into Gouvia Marina

Through this process we became friends … Marcel sold his oil company in Kazakhstan and thought that he’d try yachting for a year – 8 months in Europe bracketing a 4 month trek in New Zealand in the winter. Marcel has 3 kids in Holland and the youngest one Joost had a great time with Jessie and Ross hanging out on Tara and Tomskii Kastan. Joost is the same age as Ross and was born in Calgary where Marcel ran an oil company for a number of years before heading off to Kazakhstan.

Poolside deck for playing cards. 

We’ve kept in touch through the last year or so … Marcel took a job in New Zealand running an oil company so we didn’t see him sailing in Europe last summer. He’s got a great sense of humour and a big challenge for Yelena being from Kazakhstan is that her passport is completely full of visas – and when she needed a new passport it took 4 months and lots of effort to get it from the Kazakh government. So travelling is can be quite painful for her. Part of the appeal of NZ is that she can get a NZ passport in 3 years …. In typical Marcel style he said “If I had to choose having a Kazakh passport or AIDS, I might choose AIDS because it would be easier.”

Pool for wrestling. 

Anyway, we had come into Gouvia marina the previous day and settled in. Cleaned the boat and did a few maintenance items, and enjoyed the pool there. At around 11:00 am Tomskii Kastan arrived, pulled in a couple of boats away and we had our reunion. Marcel had all three kids on board and it was very nice to see Joost and Tomas again and to meet his 22 year old daughter Marieka. 

Later that day we rented scooters and zoomed around Corfu, including a scooter riding lesson for Ross, who picked it up quickly. I had a chance to experience the “Check into Greece” scenario – again. 

Anyway, we got the stuff we needed and then Ross had a chance to try out the scooter and loved it. He says he wants that to ride to school in the new year ….. park anywhere, 100 miles per gallon of gas, not too fast …. might be the perfect solution for our family transportation needs.