Long Sail South to Levkas

Marcel’s daughter Marieka is an arts student and she is in search of ruins and museums so we agreed to leave Gaeios to head south through Levkas. We left early picking up our anchor and powering out of the harbour. We had about 35 miles to go to the Levkas canal so we were powering reasonably hard. Tomskii Kastan (TK from here on in) was a mile or two behind us so we decided to turn off the engine, pull up the Spinnaker – the wind was 6.5 knots from behind, and go swimming.

Tara looking colourful!

We acquired the spinnaker from Kremik because they missed a delivery date, and we had a ‘snuffer’ made for it at North Sails in Israel. Easy Swissa is the owner of the loft and an outstanding person whose company I truly enjoyed. Anyway, the snuffer makes spinnaker handling fairly easy … it puts a fiberglass tube with a nylon sock around the spinnaker. When you want to raise the chute (cool sailor’s lingo for spinnaker – also used interchangeably with kite) you pull up the sock, then pull the snuffer to the top using a rope system. It makes a big spinnaker manageable. Taking it down is just as easy … head downwind a bit, ease the sheet while pulling the sock down … voila – big sail easily managed.

So, we had the spinnaker up, were swimming in 3.5 to 4.2 knots of boat-speed. This is our patented jump off the bow, swim after the boat, grab the rope being pulled behind the boat, pull yourself up the rope onto the swim ladder and … repeat. Ross is the best at it, Jessie is good too though she only wants to be in the water if someone else is there too … she must have seen an early Spielberg movie or something.

The floating bridge at Levkas opens on the hour, we had 8 miles to go and ninety minutes so we decided to carry on with the spinnaker up as TK passed us under motorsailing. We reckoned we’d sail until we were about 45 minutes of powering with a 10 minute buffer for arriving at the bridge.

Once we pulled up the swim ladder and the swim buoy we tie behind the boat we were doing a solid 5 knots. We pulled out the mainsail – 6.8 knots … the wind strengthened two knots and we were clipping along in the solid 8’s. We quickly went through TK’s lee and made it to Lefkas with time to spare. We really must use the spinnaker more as it really extends our ability to carry sail instead of powering in lighter air.

We got to the canal at Levkas about 10 minutes early, came into the harbour and noticed everyone was anchored so we threw ours out. TK did as well … the guys behind them seemed a bit surprised and indented the buoys (bad idea) and found themselves – and their keel – firmly on the sandbar. A small powerboat came to rescue them … being Greece I hope they negotiated the fee up front. Anyway, we squeezed past the floating bridge, down the canal. Ross and Marina took off in the dinghy to get some gasoline and then Ross had fun buzzing around the boat for the 3 or 4 miles of the canal. Levkas canal is a well dredged and marked canal between a salt marsh that separates the mainland and Nisos Levkas. It leads to a sheltered area that has many bays and interesting places to anchor or hang out.

Standing by until we could go in.

Coming through...bridge at right in blue.

Jessie and Matt on the way.

Ross bombing around in the dinghy as we
went down the canal.

We chose Tranquil Bay – though since being named such it has become so busy that you don’t want to spend any time there. Past that is a nice wide bay that is fully sheltered, though the water was green not blue like at Paxos. The water was also 28.5 degrees C so it wasn’t too refreshing. Ross setup our rope-swing spinnaker-pole and we were making like Tarzan off the boat. Marina quipped “Does the boat move as much when we jump off it?” managing to get a dig in about my expanding girth … primarily driven by my beer, cheese and whiskey diet.

Navionics on the IPad showing our track in yellow
and where we ended up in the bay. It is FANTASTIC
software and essential to our navigation.

 

We had dinner aboard and then joined our friends ashore in the Elena café – where I quaffed a couple of Mythos beers with Marcel while Marina enjoyed some chilled red wine and Jessie ate a Chocolate Pie without sharing much of it. 

Gaios Paxos – Coming back to a Favourite Place

Yelena, Marina and Jess...the night before leaving Corfu. 

We left Corfu town fairly early and headed to Paxos – only about 15 miles away. We decided to have lunch in Lakka, a bay on the northern half of Paxos and then meet up with the Tomskii Kastan crew in the city of Gaios.
Last time we were at Lakka it gave us some great memories – I think it’s still Ross’ facebook picture leaping off the boat. This is also where we watched the hopelessly drunk and inept German fellow try to drive his buddies in a dinghy to the quay … what a laugh. When we were here in 2010 it was in the month of September – August is a little busier. Coming into Lakka there were so many boats so we found a small space, dropped our hook and settled down to some swimming and lunch. When Jess and I were diving under the boat we noticed that we  were directly over an anchor chain of a big powerboat who put out more than 100 meters of chain in 3 meters of water before tying his stern to a rock. I think the entire marina could have swung safely off that amount of chain in a hurricane.

At around 2pm we picked up anchor and headed towards Gaios – the metropolis of Paxos. It’s built around an island and you drive down a channel towards the city and anchor stern-to-the-mole using classic Med-mooring techniques of throwing your anchor and tying your stern to the quay. 

Tara, tucked in. 

We arrived either 10 minutes too early or 10 minutes too late. Had we been 10 minutes earlier the two boats that took the remaining spots would have been behind us (one was a 40’ powerboat that went by us at 10 knots in the entrance was one of them – not exactly fair or particularly responsible behaviour). 

Doing nails is a favourite pastime...it's become
more like art.

Anyway a very nice Frenchman beside Tomskii pulled his boat over and made a hole for us. Initially we tied up to Tomskii but we decided throwing our own anchor out made sense so we sent Ross in the dinghy and he did a fantastic job this time.

Can you see tha Gaios geese?

Gaios is full of shops, Tavernas, bars, and we availed ourselves of all of them. When putting the dinghy in we saw a turd floating by – barbarians! That nixed swimming, though I don’t think I’d ever swim there unless I had wrapped a rope in our prop or had dropped the only set of keys we have for the boat in the drink.



Ross heading out to check out the swimming area.



For our swimming fix we went out of the harbour entrance by some rocky outcrops and dropped the dinghy anchor and went swimming. Water temperature a balmy 27.8 degrees or so it said, though it was not as warm a few meters underwater. The cooler water is actually welcome as we try to escape the heat.


Matt paying the port fees...21 Euro, not bad.

 For dinner Jess made her patented Spaghetti Bolognese and a beautiful Caprese salad that we devoured and talked until about midnight watching the traffic on the street stroll by … and then packed it in.

Sounds like a holiday.

Heading out of Gaios.

A Completely Different Perspective on Corfu City

The last time we went through Gouvia and Corfu was September 2010 (the 17^th to be exact) and while Gouvia is a nice marina our experience downtown Corfu was that it was pretty seedy and dirty. Turned out that we were going to the ‘East Van’ side of Corfu and completely missed the “West-end” side of the equation.

The Crew of Tomskii Kastan

After watering and gassing up at Gouvia we left with Tomskii at around 2pm. We were happy to power most of the way but Marcel pulled out his sails and so we were guilted into putting ours up too. There was 8-10 knots of breeze and we were only going a few miles …. So what the heck. We pulled out the jib and main and, as always when two boats are sailing we were in a  bit of a race.

Corfu's Old Town

If Marcel was one of my sail-boat racing buddies I would have quipped “you need to raise the anchor before you go sailing“ as Tara sailed away from Tomskii so far that we ended up tacking around and going back to meet them. We then sailed into the Old Corfu harbour side by side in about 2 knots of wind. The girls jumped off Tara and swam to Tomskii who rolled up their sails and anchored. Ross and I were left on Tara sailing under the main alone. Ross was impatient but I was happy sailing, drinking a Heineken.  Out of the blue a 70 foot old IOR boat came in at 9 knots and snagged the anchoring spot beside Tomskii – using the patented ‘drop your anchor while moving forward at 5 knots technique while nearly running over the dinghy of the guy you’re anchoring behind manoeuver.’ We dropped anchor a hundred meters further inshore on this rocky bottom and put out a mile of chain.

Tara at anchor beside Corfu's Old Town

That evening we went in to dinner – Tomas was off to a festival in Budapest Hungary meeting up with some buddies and then home to Holland for 2^nd year of Applied Physics at University. The night before they had picked up Yelena’s son Anton who lives in Prague with his friend Seba – short for Sebastian and these two now joined the Tomskii crew. 

Yet another excellent dinner out - with the Tomskii clan.

The older kids went back to the boat with Ross and Joost who stayed to play video games, while the rest of us explored Corfu’s Old town. 

Jess and Yelena hanging out at the Old Fort.

At the Old Fort

We all met up at the dinghies – Marcel, Yelena, Jessie, Marina and me going back to the boat to hit the hay, and the three 20-year-olds going out to the clubs at 23:00 …  I wonder when they got back to the boat.

We had a quick beer on the back of Tomskii, picked Joost off Tara and deposited him back home, then called it a night – with a beautiful harvest full-moon peeking up over the horizon.

Getting through Customs in Greece

While Greece is in the EU, in some ways, you’d never know.

So … how exactly do you check into Greece?

First, the boat needs to check in and get what is called a “Transit Log”. This is a paper document you fill out in triplicate – using carbon paper (bet you haven’t seen that since 1985) filling out the boat name, the particulars, etc. They check the boat papers, the insurance, and the skipper’s passport – then you pay 30 Euros and the boat is now legally in the country – well … almost.

The next step is to find a Police station to do the Passport entry. Fortunately in Corfu they’re located in the same building. In some places such as Rhodos and Simi, they’re about a mile away from each other. Here you go through the normal passport scenario where they scan it, leaf through your passport appearing to be interested in where you have been before; then they hand it back to you … So now you and your crew are legally in the EU. Great.

The last step is to go to the Port Police – kind of like the Coast Guard but a little different. In Corfu the Port Police are in the same cruise-ship compound – about 2 kms away from Customs and Passport Control. Thankful for the scooter I had rented I zoomed over there and got in the queue. The Port Police take your crew-list (made up when you’re doing the passports) and the Transit Log (picked up from Customs), and put a couple of stamps in it, take another 15 Euros and hand it back to you … now your boat is legally in Greece, your crew is legally in Greece, and …well I don’t really understand what the Port Police do – though they sometimes monitor the harbours and charge for mooring at the town quay – about 10% of the time in our experience.

So there you have it – two to three hours of time, a bunch of running around, and you’re legally in Greece.  

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.

Mercedes, Mercedes, Mercedes, Audi, BMW, Mercedes

If cars are any indication, prosperity has come to Sarande Albania. Everywhere you look there are Mercedes Benz cars – some old, some new, some in disrepair, some in perfect shape.

Ross and I love a TV show from the UK called “Top Gear” – apparently we aren’t alone as they’ve been on the air for 20 seasons. A couple of seasons ago Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May, did a show about “What type of car should an Albanian Mafia boss Want to Own” and took a Rolls Royce, a Mercedes S Class 6.3 Liter and a “Bentley” (actually Bentley begged off at the last moment so they substituted it with a decrepit Lada and called it the “Bentley” for the remainder of the program – or until they rolled it off a cliff).

Anyway there were two stories that I distinctly remember from this episode: One where Jeremy Clarkson in a close-up turns to the camera and says something like “Albanian Mercedes owners take their cars’ performance very seriously and reduce weight wherever possible – so many of them have filed off their VIN numbers to save weight and go faster.” Apparently Albania is where many of the knicked cars from Europe find their way to. The second story was that the Albanian minister of justice was meeting with his Greek counterpart on how to reduce the level of car theft in Western Europe with the cars ending up in Albania. When going through the Greek border, the Albanian Minister’s car was put through a routine check and the Greek border police found that the Minister’s car had been stolen from Austria six months earlier.

So when travelling to Albania, it’s probably better to 1) leave your Mercedes behind locked in your heated garage; and 2) if you own a Mercedes dealership in Albania, forget about selling cars … the real money is in the Service department.

Two days in Sarande Albania

Map of Albania - we were on the South Coast

The last time we were in this area we studiously avoided Albania because we had read all sorts of accounts where yachts were harassed, taxes levied, aggravated assaults on the tourists, and unexploded mines. Thankfully it all turned out to be a total load of rubbish.

As you may recall, we must get Tara out of the EU every 18 months or potentially become liable for some level of taxation … so we were struggling to figure out what to do. Montenegro, where we visited before, is about 200 miles north of Corfu – and that’s a very long week of travelling. By contrast, Sarande Albania is 15 miles from Corfu’s Gouvia harbour –a mere 2 hour jaunt in protected waters.

Thankfully Cruiser’s Forum had posts from a number of yachts that had recently visited Albania with positive outcomes so we thought we’d give it a try.

Tara at the Ferry Dock

We were impressed. We pulled into Sarande and called Agim Zholi on channel 11 on the VHF and he met us at the dock and instructed us where to go. Like Greece you use your anchor to med-moor and then tie up to the quay. Tara got a great spot where we were partially on the side of the quay – and that made getting on and off the boat very simple. We were a little concerned at first, but we were in the Customs area well patrolled by police and under security camera – so we felt more secure than in many other places we have visited.

View from the starboard side.

What you’ll find in Sarande is a bustling tourist coastal town with beaches, cafés, bars, restaurants and places to hang out. The weather was excellent – sunny and HOT and the water was fairly clear – it was definitely clearer upon our departure so the big wind and waves that took us there from Italy were likely responsible for making the water a little cloudier than normal.

View from the port side

We didn’t really avail ourselves of much touring, we were tired from our dash across Italy and just soaked up the sun, lazed about, used the free WiFi internet for hours on end, called home, shopped and ate. The prices in Albania are very reasonable. You can buy a flat in Sarande for 40,000 Euros, or as Agim said for “about what you would pay to buy a parking stall in Canada.” Dinner out was excellent. We tried some local cuisine, Marina sampling local fish – all excellent. 

Lunch was amazing too!

One night we went out for Pizza and pasta. The pasta arrived first for Marina and Ross – Marina waited a minute or two and then we suggested that she and Ross go ahead … then we looked at Ross and he was already finished his Spaghetti Bolognese. When the waiter delivered our Pizzas we ordered Ross a second plate. The waiter, who spoke very good English, laughed and told a couple of his buddies and they pointed at Ross and laughed too. He delivered the Pizza for Jess and I and a couple minutes later dropped another plate of Pasta for Ross – that he finished before we got through our Pizza. His second plate was as clean as the first … must be nice to be young. The kids then walked back to the boat while Marina and I relaxed and watched the world go by. Our waiter delivered a nice lemon gelato and we paid up and strolled slowly down the beach sea-wall back to the boat. (Total bill for 3 pasta dishes, 2 pizzas, 3 cokes, a beer, a bottle of water and a liter of house wine …. 36 Euros … we tipped to 40 … gotta love Albania)

Agim's son, Agim, Mr. Xianni (sounds like Johnny)
and Matt having our coffee.

For me the highlight of the trip was having coffee for an hour or so with Agim, his son Leonardo and friend Mr. Xianni, a guide that works for Agim. We learned some of the history of Albania and its communist roots. Xianni, a retired teacher, said that Communism makes sense in a perfect world but …. Unfortunately our world is not perfect. He then told me a joke to help me understand how it used to be. He said:

“In the communist ideal the workers work hard for the greater good of humanity and are rewarded with all their needs being provided by Government. In reality however, the workers pretend to work hard, and the government pretends to pay them well.”

They explained that Albania has a rich history of religious tolerance with Christian, Muslim and Jews all being part of the cultural mosaic – and like the Turks we have met, the Muslim culture seems to be less rigorous than we found in the Middle-eastern cultures with more of an emphasis on getting along than acrimony.

The boardwalk at Sarande. 

Like much of the former Soviet Union, there remains corruption in Albania – government officials get wealthy and hold back progress, but if Agim, Leo and Xianni are any indication of the general population, their sunny outlook and emphasizing education for their young people will eventually allow them to break through to the next level of prosperity.

Leaving Albania