Sea Change

The next day I had to clear the boat into Greece. The pilot book gave a list of documents to take along and warned to also take as much patience as we could muster.

The customs office at the marina couldn't handle non EEC boats so it was a taxi to Corfu town port offices and the first of a series of office shuffles. The bureaucrats were some of the worst I have seen anywhere, obviously doing nothing but trying anything to avoid dealing with us. When we finally encouraged them to deal with us they filled out photocopied forms with multiple layers of carbon paper (those under 50 may need to google carbon paper) and wrote it all out again in big ledgers with hand drawn columns and hand numbered pages. They had a complete lack of interest in where we had come from, who or what we had brought, no one seemed to even mention VAT, it was just all about filling out the forms which in handwritten ledgers meant the information couldn't be searched for, or collated in any way. A truly total waste of time. Still I keep my cool better than one woman who screamed "Merda bastardo" as she left the office in an absolute temper (shit bastard has become a favourite swear on the boat).

We now have a transit log that must be stamped at every harbour we visit that has port police but not anchorages or smaller harbours and we have yet to do that part.