First week in Greece

It’s hard to believe we’ve been here a week already. We arrived at the Gouvias Marina on the island of Corfu last Wednesday morning. We chose it because all the information we had said that was where we should go on Corfu to clear into Greece. Not true! The Customs and Immigration offices that were supposed to be at the marina aren’t there, so we ended up taking a taxi to the Port of Corfu to do our paperwork. (If we hadn’t been so tired after our 40-hour passage from Croatia, we could have taken the bus.) EU boats can do their check-in at the marina, but non-EU boats can’t.

Sunrise over the Greek mainland

Rocky bits

Corfu town anchorage

Greek fishing nets

Since then we’ve been pretty busy. We reconnected with Islay Mist and have also met some other American boats, including Sangaris and Cormorant. We’ve also heard that our neighbors from the winter in Cartagena are here, but we haven’t seen them yet. Besides the island of Corfu, we have anchored at Paxos, in a cove on the mainland, and at Nidri on Lefkas. Now we’re on Meganísi. (If you’re trying to follow along on Google Earth or in an atlas, you should know that there are different spellings for all of these places since Greek uses a different alphabet.) We’re going to follow Islay Mist around until they turn east and head for Athens. Then we’ll look for a weather window to go west across the Ionian Sea to Sicily.

Although we did go to the archeological museum in Corfu, we’ve mostly been sailing and swimming and enjoying what feels like a long summer vacation. That means that there really isn’t all that much to write about, but we’re having fun.

Playing with the girls of Islay Mist