In Pilos again

Hi,

We're back to Pilos. After a long round of the fingers of the Peloponnese, we've started our journey NW towards Zakinthos.
In short, we left Kalamata on Thursday the 23rd, spent a night in the bay of Limeni, and then the following morning visited the beautiful caves of Diros. Those are really exceptional stalactite caves. They took the 8 of us on a small boat through a path of 1500m with fresh water under the boat and natural tunnels just over our heads. You can see some of it in the pictures.
After Diros, we did a long sail to Githio which is a town at the North end of the huge Lakonikos bay.
From Githio, we were able to take a couple of taxis and go to Monemvassia. This is the place Yael wanted to visit for several years. Since we didn't make it with the boat, this time, we found a way to get there by land. Anyway, it was so nice there that we promised ourselves that we'll get there with the boat one day.
Weather is pretty warm, but was raining hard for a couple of nights.

From Githio, we sailed down to a very special bay called Porto Kaiyo.
You can sit on the beach, surrounded by high cliffs with scattered fortresses that used to belong to pirates.

A long leg to Korini, and then another 23 miles in a rainy day and we're in Pilos.

We're planning to spend the night in the bay here and leave tomorrow morning to Stefani islands, half way to Zakinthos.

We were also much more lucky with the fish. We caught about a fish a day on the days that we did try to fish. You can imagine how good the sushi was...

As usual, you can see some pictures at:

princess_nayeli_2010_09_peloponnese

Porto Limeni

Today, we sailed for the first time. We left Kalamata marina in no wind and as we went, the wind picked up at our back up to about 17 kts. Lovely sail in a winter like atmosphere with cloudy sky and a dark blue sea. When we got close to our destination at Porto Limeni, a heavy rain started for maybe 10 minutes. We got soaked, but 10 minutes later it all went away.

We' re now on anchor in Porto Limeni.

Kalamata and the transit log

We arrived at Kalamata marina on Monday at 4pm after a long travel that started at 6am in Ben Gurion Airport. We were lucky with all the buses so we made it all the way down to Kalamata pretty fast. After all, this is like the end of the world here. It's so far from everything.

Anyway, I had an interesting experience with the Greek customs that I wanted to share with everyone who sails in Greece.

Since we entered Greece on March 22nd (In KastelloRizo) , our transit log expired today, September 21st. It was valid for 6 months. A transit log is like a tourist visa for boats.

So I went to the customs here in Kalamata to extend the transit log (I was told back then in Kastellorizo that it shouldn't be a problem), and found out that I can only extend it by 15 days. I wasn't planning to leave Greece in 15 days!

Fortunately, I met there a very nice and helpful guy named Mr. Stavrianakos. First he said that he can only extend my stay in Greece in 15 days. I told him that I need to get to Preveza and it would take me more than 15 days. He checked all the regulations again and said that he can't find any way around it. As he started the paperwork I tried a different approach: I asked him if the fact that the boat was locked in the marina for over a month while I was at home, helps me get a longer extension. He said: "That's interesting. If you can get me a letter from the marina that you left the boat for a month, I can give you an extension of another month".

So I went back to the marina office, and then again to the customs office with the letter (I'm lucky to have bicycle on board), and after a long journey through paperwork, payment at the cashier, etc. I got the extension.

I tried to understand how this works so here is what he explained to me:

As a foreign boat, you're allowed to stay in Greece for only 6 months. Then you have to leave the country for 6 months, at least, and then you can come back for another period of 6 months, and so on.

Then, if you leave the boat for a long period of time, you can either surrender your transit log at the customs office or just come back with a letter from the marina that shows that the boat was left locked in the marina, and the that time off won't count against the 6 months. So actually the 6 months is the net sailing time that you have in Greece.

In practice, the bureaucracy is so heavy that I don't know if it's practical to go through it every time you leave the boat and go.

There is still the question of the reciprocal tax that I need to pay every 3 months. I still don't understand how it works and feel like I'm the only boat owner paying it. Once I understand how it works, I'll share it in this blog.

Eyal