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!

Getting Tara Prepared

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The effort to commission the boat is inversely proportional to the effort put into decommissioning. Fortunately last year Philip Schimert and I did a great job, so it wasn’t too bad.. The girls started with washing the deck cleaning off a year’s grime and scirocco (red desert) dust while I got the boat systems working again. We pulled down the halyards, put the sails on deck, fenders, cushions and SUPs, put the wheels on, fit the Bimini and Dodger back on their frames, and pulled what seemed like miles of rope through blocks. After the first day we were pretty much done. The next morning we thought we would put the jib up, but Murphy had another plan. 

Our headstay foil is attached with tiny set screws and if they’re proud even a mm or two, the jib wont go up. Worse in this case, it wouldn’t come down and the wind was coming - and Tara was still on blocks. Yikes! Marina went up the forestay and tried to fix it and in the end we decided to tie it down around the forestay and do it in the water.

This year they pulled Tara out using a tractor before it went onto the travel-lift. This must be a new machine because previously Tara was too big for the trailer — but it works like a hot-damn. Tara went into the water and we checked all the thru-hulls to make sure we’re not sinking and then off to Preveza, the town across the bay. While I love Cleopatra as a boat yard, the marina sets us up stern-to the prevailing winds and the motion is pretty severe, plus the wave slapping against the hull are hardly restful. Add to that being able to get to the grocery store, liquor store, get bags of ice and tons of restaurants too - making Preveza a winner. The only downside is stern-to using the anchor is one of the most complex maneuvers you can do, and Preveza had a strong cross wind and current just to add some more challenge for the first one of the year.

2019 Here we Come

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2019 so far has been a very eventful year for us. Jess decided to take a term off from Queen’s university Economics program. She’s been working and hanging out since December and is looking forward to going back to school in September.

Ross went back to school for his 4^th and final year in Engineering at Queen’s, so the previous couple of years of empty nesting were put on hold, and some adjustments needed to be made. OK what’s up for the summer, who wants to go? Turns out everyone … awesome!

Ross applied for and was accepted to a Masters of Engineering at both Cornell and Berkeley … after visiting San Francisco it’s not hard to guess where he decided to go, in spite of the sky-high rents in the Berkeley area. For all the bellyaching about rents in Vancouver, Berkeley is roughly double.

Ross came home after exams getting ready to hang out until July when he heads to Europe with some buddies for a 3 week victory tour after graduation. His early-summer-stay-up-till-0400 -gaming-and-drinking-dad’s-beer program was rudely interrupted when he received an email from the Dean of Engineering saying that he was awarded the medal for being the top academic student in the Engineering Physics department at Queen’s. Crap — rustle up three tickets to Kingston for Marina, Jess and Ross (I stayed home to care for the dog) and convocation looked like a lot of fun.

June 28^th, Departure Day, came up fast and furious. Got the house in order, installed the watering system in for the plants in the back-yard. Got the dog into the kennel, serviced the cars, assembled a couple of 49.5 pound bags full of boat parts and got Ross to drop us off at the  Granville Street Skytrain station and off to the Airport. We breezed through security, had a very average lunch at Monk's and then waited at the gate.  

Marina was called to the desk and someone had paid for our seats, so they put us in the class with more leg room. Things are looking up.

16 hours later ....  What-a-long-day … Vancouver — Zurich 10 hours, 2 hour layover, 3 hours from Zurich to Athens, 4 hour layover, 1 hour flight delay, 1 hour flight to Aktio, 10 minutes to get bags, 5 minute cab ride to the Marina, put the bags into the room and off to Food & More restaurant for a beer and some rose and to say hug our favourite staff Freda and Xenophon. It’s nice to be remembered. I did a fly by walk past Tara, looking good girl. Off to bed, for a few hours anyway.