Leaving Greece on Tuesday

We are dangerously close to being ready to leave the marina and
try our luck, once again, on the open water.
Perhaps the operative word is “dangerously.” Time, according
to its custom, will tell.

The general idea is that we will go from the northwest corner
of Greece to the heel of the Italian boot, and westward along
the instep until we cross to Syracuse in Sicily; thence to a
tax-saving sojourn in Tunisia, and from Tunisia northward to
Sardinia and then westward to Spain and from Spain to France.
We will winter in Toulon and by this time next year, we will
have been whisked via Dockwise to St Thomas in the USVI. Next
we will scurry southward so that Horizons will be in Trinidad
for the beginning of hurricane season.

That is the general idea.

So much for plans, what about real life? Real life consists of
a varied collection of elements, such as Weak Dollar-Strong Euro,
Recalcitrant Radar Unit, Finding the Local and Getting Shipshape.
Additional elements include Customs Formalities, Onerous Taxes
in Greece and in Virginia and Crowding.

All this real life is set in a setting—a setting that includes
a second Easter and a continuing view of Albania.
To the east of the marina on the other side of the water, Albanian
mountains rise up, forested with trees until you get to the ridge
at the top, where the mountain is forested with antennas. Greece
is all lit up at night and Albania stays dark, at least the part
we see from here.

Our first cruise in Euro-land was in the Caribbean in 2002: St
Martin, St Barts, Guadeloupe, Martinique. That was when a dollar
bought you a euro, more or less, and vice versa. By the time
we reached Italy in 2004 we were looking at a euro that cost
a buck and a quarter, maybe a little bit more. Going to the cash
register these days is a bit like being mugged. We have not yet
resorted to rolling drunks in dark alleys near tavernas as a
means of supplementing our meager pensions. Not yet.

We blew a day and a half last week figuring out that the radar
is busted and the display unit at the helm won’t display the
charts on its screens; and further, that it will not make any
sense to fix the two problems before October. So we will be radar-less
and will have to use paper charts and written-up plans this trip.
Therefore we will do fewer overnights and more old-fashioned
navigation. The US RayMarine help-techs were most helpful and
they guided us down the troubleshooting path all the way to the
conclusions noted above. We spoke to them by telephone via Skype,
a technological marvel.

Prowling around the area in town just outside the marina we spotted
an establishment called The Navigator. This seemed like a bit
of good luck, since the on-premises watering hole at Kemer Marina
in Turkey went by the same name. It has become our local. It
is a proper British pub, plus it has a good kitchen; fittingly
it has an affiliated Indian restaurant adjacent, so that the
customer can enjoy his steak and kidney pie if that is to his
liking, or move five meters in a southerly direction, where he
may enjoy his vindaloo or tandoori. A congenial place, and we
are there for a while most evenings. The quiz nights are of a
high standard.

Horizons was in pretty good shape after the winter. We got the
sails on and the canvas enclosure up and whipped the battery
bank into shape. We’ll give her an intense cleaning tomorrow
and bring the outboard back to life, we hope. The boat-repair
side of our existence has been on the dull side this spring,
but who needs excitement?

We had a sit-down with the marina manager this afternoon, to
discuss how to get out of Dodge legally. There are i’s to dot
and t’s to cross, except we are in Greece and the iotas don’t
have dots and the taus cross at the top, not in the middle, so
a bit of guidance from a local expert is not only welcome and
appropriate, it is necessary for the Anglophone foreigner. Mr
Dimitrious was most helpful. (Dimitrious is his first or Christian
name, but the Greeks, like Southerners and Turks, politely append
the Mr to it, as in Mistah Billy, my late uncle from Taylor County
GA, or Hasan Bey, Turkey’s legendary marina manager.)

We think we can handle the paperwork. Tragically, Greece charges
income tax on non-EU boats that stay in the country more than
three months. We shall be parting with about 650 euros to satisfy
this obligation. They measure income by boat length, by the way.

We learn from e-mail about developments in Middlesex County VA
with respect to the recent reassessment regarding property taxes.
We are less than delighted to learn that our property is worth
10% more than any unit in the development has ever sold for,
and some 15% more than a similar unit’s offering price, said
unit having been on the market for a year. At times like these
we remember the wisdom of Will Rogers: It’s a good thing we don’t
get all the government we pay for.

A non-EU boat becomes liable for VAT (15-20% of its value) once
it stays continuously in the EU for 18 months. Accordingly, we
will fit into our westward journey a week’s stay in Tunisia.
It was good enough for Hannibal, plus we won’t then have to worry
about paying VAT for another 18 months, at which time we will
have crossed the pond.

As to crowding, there is plenty of water and excepting such classic
bottlenecks as the Straits of Messina, when we are on the water
and moving, most of the time there are no other boats in sight.
If they doubled the number of cruising boats the on-the-water
part of it would change hardly at all. The shoreline, however,
is what it is, and anchoring, mooring and docking opportunities
are fixed and finite. Add one more boat and the pressure on the
system increases just that much. The legendary cruisers of the
1960s could find a place to anchor with ease. What with one thing
and another—mainly the general prosperity that allows increasing
numbers of people to buy and operate boats—it gets to be a bit
of a battle finding that place to stay. They say it gets worse
as you go west—where we are going—and that Croatia, which we
enjoyed so much and so inexpensively in 2005, has ramped up the
fees.

We have been privileged in the spring of 2008 to experience the
Easter holiday twice. The American side of it mostly involved
watching Nico chase around the back yard finding hard-boiled
eggs, which was pleasurable enough. The Orthodox calendar put
Easter at 27 April, so we were here for that. They do processions
and they ring bells. There are fireworks. There are concerts.
The whole thing is televised. People leave Athens in a vast exodus
to celebrate Easter in the hinterlands.

Corfu has the reputation of a great Easter celebration and it
fills up with metropolitan Greeks for the weekend. A local tradition
involves placing terra cotta water vessels, with a quite a bit
of water in them, on balconies, roofs and window ledges of hotel
rooms in downtown Corfu. (This happens just before 1100 hours
on Holy Saturday.) At the appointed hour—11 am—the vessels go
airborne and crash into the street 20-80 feet below, depending
on the floor from which launched. They go crash. They go boom.
Their basic terra cotta vessel, by the way, is a bit larger than
a 55-gallon drum. Impressive. If we knew more about it we could
explain the symbolism of it to you, but we are humble sailors—with
a lot to be humble about, it goes without saying—and broadly
ignorant of many of the details behind the passing scene.

*************************************
Laurie came back from the Customs office on Friday, May 2, with
a satisified almost-smile. Customs charged her 40 euro for an
extension to our Cruising Log through May 8 and told her to come
back to check out with the Port Police on Sunday, if the weather
looked good to leave on Monday. Then we would go through passport
control. Could this be all there was to it? He said not a thing
about the Cruising tax on non EU boats in Greece more than 90
days. Could we get out of Greece 650 euro ($1000) to the good?

No. Today, Sunday, when all looked good to leave on Monday, the
Port Police told us we would have to pay the 650 euro to the
tax office. We would have to come back to the building the port
police are in to get the bill from the tax office so that we
could pay it at the central tax office on Corfu on Monday, when
both offices are open. We had been advised by the marina manager
to avoid all these problems by just checking out on Friday, even
if we left on Monday, but we were too afraid of Greek officialdom
to do this. You can see why.

So, now we plan on leaving on Tuesday morning bright and early
with everything done and fixed, with the exception of the previously
mentioned unfixables.

By the way, today Jack announced that 63 is not the new 55, so
we’re glad we’re doing all this while we are still young, nimble
and strong and have our wits about us, such as they (and we,
for that matter) are.