Wednesday 16 April 2025 - Corfu

The weather has abated, which was fortunate as we had to be in Corfu today to meet our son who is coming for a few days with us over the Easter break. We knew that the wind was due to return, although not as strongly as it had been over the last couple of days, but that it would funnel up the passage between Corfu and Albania, that we had to take.  In order to minimise the effect of this, we elected to go early, well very early.  The alarm went off at 04:30 and we slipped lines from the harbour at 05:05. 

We motored the whole distance to Corfu town, passing the beautiful north east coastline while staying clear of the cruise ships approaching the town and the hydrofoil ferries that go back and forth to Albania at great speed. On arrival we anchored in a familiar well sheltered bay, next to the port.


The other reason for making sure that we were early, was that we had to go through the formal check procedures to enter Greece. Fearing that the wind was going to get up again, we elected for Tricia to remain with the boat while I went ashore with all of the necessary paperwork. All went swimmingly at my first visit to the Port Police,  but Customs proved to be a different matter.  The system has changed since we were here last year, and has been taken (partly) online. Without going through all of the sordid details, the new system was difficult to use, and lacked some user friendliness. Having been sent away from Customs, we spent the afternoon on multiple attempts to make the necessary submission, without success.  Eventually I returned to Customs and found a slightly more helpful Customs Officer.  With some other outside help, the documents were submitted by the evening, but it was too late for Customs to process them, so we would have to return in the morning.

Frustrating.

Late in the evening, Chris our son arrived, and we did a James Bond style pickup in the dinghy from an apparently random location.  This all went very smoothly.

Distance today -         30 Miles

Distance this year - 208 miles 

Steve (and Tricia & Chris)

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