We motored the seven miles down to Gouvia Marina in about an hour. Our VHF call was acknowledged and a boat sent out to meet us, but he said there was no room for the night. After a bit of discussion it emerged that there was room if we left by 10.00 the next day to allow the returning charter boats to get in, which was fine by us as we only really wanted to check into Greece properly. He signalled for us to follow him, engines were engaged and Splice started to turn in a circle... not what was planned.

We quickly established that we had lost the control to the port engine, as this had happened once before we thought we knew what to do to fix it. We carefully motored back out to the anchorage on the starboard engine and dropped the hook. Splice will respond OK to one engine but manoeuvring in close quarters is not easy, and we were very glad the fault occurred before we were committed to a mooring. After a hot and contorted half hour in the space behind the helm station, we had re-tightened the inaccessible screw that holds the engine control cable and Splice was behaving again. Our marina entry was easier with two engines!

Gouvia is large, we think the biggest marina in Greece, it takes a while to walk around and their pricing is not very Greek, at E101 for the night which included our Cruising Association discount, it was more Italian. We did however have a productive visit as we acquired our DEPKA (the formal cruising document) and officially entered Greece, managed to do our washing and shopping and meet up with another Broadblue cat - ‘Imagine’. We met David and Lucinda last year in Syracuse, Sicily and now had a pleasant evening at Zorbas Taverna with them and their visiting friends Kenton and Melanie.


Broadblue 'Imagine' follows us out of Gouvia Marina the next morning

We wouldn’t return to the marina out of choice as it is hot and expensive but the visit fulfilled its function.

Main Photo: Dinner at Zorbas with the crew of Imagine