Departing Corfu

After we fill up with diesel we finally leave Corfu at 10am, we are heading for Gaios a pretty village on the east side of Paxos. We hope to arrive before 3pm to watch the F1.

The trip is uneventful and almost dejavu except the temp is 11 degrees and wind chill factor of freezing. I'm soooo cold I'm wrapped up in multiple layers and a blanket. I'm doing a cupcake but trying to suck it up. Being sick doesn't help matters.

The sailing season starts in May so I'm not sure what to find open in Gaios. On the way we stick our head into Lakka Bay but everything there is closed up. The water is an amazing turquoise colour so worth the visit.

We arrive in Gaios just after 3pm and find a great place to come along side the jetty right on the main square. Barry from the yacht behind us gives us a hand and we meet his wife Linda as well. They are regulars to the Ionians from the UK.

We quickly find a local bar that has a TV and the bar lady is very obliging to find us the F1. I'm having a few scotchies to warm me up and that works a treat. Although Gaios is a fairly big town, there is still not a lot open. We decide too eat at one of the tavernas on the square and the food is pretty average but fills us up.

A few red wines later we retire for a good nights sleep.

Final Prep

Saturday is our final day to complete all we have to do ready for our departure from Corfu.
We check the sails, launch the Australian flag, fill water tanks, do the laundry, purchase final bits and pieces for yacht and pantry, install brackets for our Muvi camera (similar to Go Pro) eventually we will have four mounts for taking video, we put up the shade cloth I made to see if it works/ fits and it does. We are pretty tired by 6pm.

We decide to walk into one of the close by villages for dinner. We stumble across the Beer Bucket Bar advertising a pool party tonight at 9.30pm but think we'll be asleep by then. We then realise we missed the Bahrain F1 qualifying today but will ensure we are somewhere tomorrow afternoon to watch the race. Most likely we will be heading to Gaios on Paxos about five hours from here. We will be heading south into a light southerly.

From the Bucket Bar we keep walking and find a pizza restaurant. That sounds perfect. We order the special and wow it's the biggest pizza we have ever seen, and the most delicious. A great base, wood fired, yum!!! We bring home the Greek salad as there was no room.

Considering there are about 1000 yachts on the marina and all in the process of getting ready for the season, it's pretty quite of a night time. The place is full of Brits both young and old. Many living on the yachts at Gouvia.

We attempt to watch a video but only stay awake for half of it, we can finish it another night.

It's still really cold of a night and early morning and I wish I'd been more prepared, anyway it will slowly get warmer each day. We spend a while talking about our sail plan and options but have not made up our mind. We will still visit some of the Greek Islands and Turkey as we have to leave the EU and may head over to Malta but we need to work out the distances etc.

A change of plan

So once we get over our morning excitement we head to the local super market to stock up. Plus we are returning our BBQ as we think it will be in the way. Boating World are happy to give us a full credit which suits us. Just a shame they don't have any of the items we want. Any way we are still working on spending that money.

Greg still can't find the seat for the tender, he has looked everywhere, so that is a mystery.

We are slowly getting accustomed to Moet22 as it's surprising how easily you forget things. It will take us a few days to get fully in the swing of things I think.

We are still leaving Corfu on Sunday and will then work out a change of sailing plan most likely leaving the yacht in Turkey instead.

We head into Corfu Town for dinner and enjoy some local cuisine of slowed baked lamb and moussaka and wash it down with some local red, mmmm yes very nice indeed.

Faulty Towers you say?

Thursday afternoon we start unpacking and cleaning. Moët22 is in very good shape, considering the winter they had there appears to be no leaks and very little mould etc. I start on the inside and Greg puts up the Bimini and pieces together the tender, minus the seat which seems to have gone missing, even though I handed it to him. We have a quite meal at the Marina and retire around 9pm.

After a solid six hours sleep, I'm awake, dam you jet lag! Anyway I get started on more cleaning and unpacking. I can't believe how cold it is outside our cabin where we were very snug; it's about 9 degrees outside. For the next four hours I work on the inside unpacking and cleaning and sorting. By 7am I'm ready for a coffee so we head to the Skippers Cafe for some great coffee and breakfast. We also hear fromMeg, Joon Tae and Je-Min on face time which is great.

Even though it's cold and it rained through the night, we wake up to a beautiful morning.

We hired a car from the airport so our first job today is to get our transit logged stamped so we can leave. This proves to be much more complicated than we first expected. The Port Police at Gouvia inform us we must pay some form of tax which we were not aware of.

We are sent to the Port Authority Office #3 which is a ten min drive away. They fill in a form that I have to take to the Tax Office just up the road. When we finally find the Tax Office there are no signs in English, I go to one counter, then another and then finally at the third counter after waiting another 30 mins someone grabs my form and reads it. Seems it's a new form of tax and no one really knows much about it. After some further forms are filled out I have to go to another counter for some reason I don't know then I'm directed to the cashier. Of course you can't pay with an Australian Credit Card only with a Greek Bank credit card. By this time I'm really questioning the tax and if we should be paying it as all. Greg decides before we pay 500 Euros tax that we get some advice from Vangellis at the boatyard which is close to where we are. Vangellis is also not aware of the tax and calls the Port Authority for us, oh it's a new tax. Seems the Govt. needs to find money any way they can and now charge non EU owned boats a quarterly tax to leave your boat here. WELL............ That changes everything for us as we were planning on leaving our yacht in Aegina for approx 18 months at the end of this trip. I don't think that will be happening now.

So once we go back to the tax office and pay the tax and get a receipt we have to go back to Office 7 at the Port Authority, they can't help us and tell us to go to Office 4 no good either, we then go back to Office 3 and they send us to Office 6 to get the transit log stamped so we can leave yeah! We then have to pay another 15 Euros for administration. Office 3 staples a copy of the receipt to the back of our transit log. We then have to back to Office 6 so they can staple the original to the front of the transit log. Wow five hours later we are now free to leave Corfu.......

Ready to launch

We arrived in Corfu today as all flights have been on time and uneventful. We have picked up our transit log from the Port Authority and Customs and we have visited the Boatyard where Moet22 has been wintered to check her out before she is launched for this years adventure. Everything looks great.

We are both slowly getting excited and once we have had a good nights sleep I'm sure we'll be in holiday mode.
The weather is perfect. It's about 20 degrees with a light wind.

Moët heaven

Farewell friends and family

Finally we have made it to the airport thanks to Meg and Je-Min.  The airport is pretty quite tonight and we have been able to use the Qantas Lounge even though we are flying with Emirates so that's a bonus.

Total travelling time is approx 28 hrs to Athens via Dubai.  We have a night in Athens then fly to Corfu on the 18th. Our yacht is being delivered to Gouvia Marina for us.  I'm still not excited as its been a big effort to get here over the last few weeks.  Our tenants have moved In and no news is good news so they say.

The first glass of bubbles went down real well.

See you all soon, stay safe and lots of love.xxoo