Electrickery
1.7km
It is early but the sun is already ruthless and what should be an easy stroll feels like a workout. By the time we reach the customs, we are sweating and we really hope that we won’t have to go back and forth 4 times. The person working there is really friendly but of course, we were meant to start with the port authorities as they are the one establishing the transit log, some kind of passport for Kujira, which needs to be stamped by the customs. We also need to pay our eTEPAI, a travel tax. I have unsuccessfully applied for it a week ago but never received a confirmation with a payment request. I am not the first one, the internet is full of tales of travellers desperately trying to get to work, and even more tales of travellers wondering why on earth you need to enter the name of your mother and father on the application form?! After a few minutes, the guy manages to get my application accepted and advises us to go pay the tax at the post office. So we walk back to town.
1.7km + 1.1Km = 2.8km
From the post office we go to the port authorities which luckily is around the block. There we are being “greeted” by Karen, a snappy, unfriendly and authoritarian official. She makes us feel like we are bugging her by asking her to do her job. After a short waiting time, she agrees to take a look at our documents, boat registration: Ok, eTEPAI: Ok, skipper licence: Ok, transit log: not Ok ..
“Where is your transit log?”
“That’s exactly why we are here, to get one”
“Did you go to the custom office?”
“Yes, but they told us too come here first”
She rolls her eyes and sigh, probably disappointed not to be able to send us on a useless journey to the other end of the port. So she resumes looking at our documents. Passport: Ok, insurance: not Ok ..
“This insurance certificate is no longer valid, we have changed the rules”
Greece has recently increased the maximum insurance premium required to be allowed to sail in it’s waters. We knew about it and have asked our insurance provider to send us an updated version however we kind of forgot to print it.
“Yes of course, sorry, that’s the old one but we have the new one, it’s on my phone”
“Ok, you need to print it”
“…”
She works in a building which has probably a printer per office. As a matter of fact there is a printer just behind her.
“Hum.. where can we print it?”
“At an internet cafe”
“?!?”
We are in 2022 and internet cafes are just about as rare as a ninja turtle walking down the street.
“Where can we find one?” I politely ask, hoping she will realise how silly her request is and will offer to print it for us.
“Along the water front”
A bit skeptical we leave the place and start walking along the water front. I guess she hasn’t walked around this part of town for a good 15 years as there is no sign of such a shop. I try my luck on google and the closest match is in a town 30km away. That seems to be a bit ridiculous. We decide to try our luck with a gaming centre.
1.7km + 1.1Km + 1.5 = 4.3km
No luck at the gaming place however he points us in the direction of a copy shop which is able to print the document for us. Now back to the port authorities. By now it is getting ridiculously hot but the time is ticking and we really want to achieve our registration today.
1.7km + 1.1Km + 1.5 + 1.6 = 5.9km
We proudly go back to “Karen” but she rains on our parade and ask us to wait while she does.. nothing?! After a while she agrees to take a look at our documents. Everything seems to be ok so she has no choice but to give us the first part of the puzzle: a crew list form to fill up and a transit log to get stamped at the custom office. Once we have this step done, we need to come back to her so she can complete our registration and officially check in Kujira. However, not really keen on seeing our faces again anytime soon she asks us to come back in the afternoon. On the door of her office the working hours are pretty clear, the place is closed on Friday afternoon. That’s a low blow Karen but we are not going to fall for it, we will be back before you can spell baklava backwards.
Back on the street, back in the sun, back to the customs office.
1.7km + 1.1Km + 1.5 + 1.6 + 1.1km = 7.0km
This time we have to wait for our turn. While we are waiting we have a quick chat with another yachty who is using the services of an agent .. we start to understand why. Once it is our turn, there is bit of a confusion due to the fact that Kujira is flying a NZ flag, that it is registered under our name, but I entered Europe with my French passport and Kim has been in Europe for more than 3 months thanks to her hardly earned spouse long term visa. But he is pretty easy going and decides to simply write down that we arrived from Italy and therefore pushing any responsibilities of our presence in Europe to the Italians.
We get our stamp!
We can now walk back to the port authorities. We are getting closer to noon and it is needless to say that it is bloody freakin’ hot.
1.7km + 1.1Km + 1.5 + 1.6 + 1.1km + 1.1km = 8.1km
Karen gets pretty upset as she sees us walking into the office.
“I had told you to come back in the afternoon!”
“Sorry sorry, do you want us to leave and come back later?”
It doesn’t look like she is really busy.
Sigh.
“No. You are here now. I will do it. Wait a moment”
She finishes doing nothing and finally asks us to show her the stamp. It looks legit to her so she checks, re-checks, and triple checks our documents but she can not find anything wrong. She stamps Kujira’s transit log.
“When are you leaving Preveza?”
“Monday”
“So why are you here today?”
“To check in…”
“You should have come Monday to do the check out at the same time as the check in!”
“…”
Greek logic?
As she is just about to hand me back all my documents she stops mid-air, puts the documents back on her desk and takes ONE MORE look at it as if she just cracked some kind of code.
My heart skips a beat as I have read many horror stories about check-in and people suddenly asked to pay ridiculous amounts of money for no good reasons. But she says nothing and finally hands me the documents. We hurry out of there before she asks me to have another look. We walk back to the boat.
1.7km + 1.1Km + 1.5km + 1.6km + 1.1km + 1.1km + 0.7km= 8.8km
We are now officially and legally in Greece! However, thanks to our NZ flag, we are requested to check in and out of EVERY port we stay at. I guess we won’t be staying in many ports then.
On the way back we stop at a chandlery which is meant to have a good sparky, based on “Women who sail the Med” FB group. I am not keen at all to have some random guy fiddle with our electrical installation but we do have some strange “Alextrickery” going on and Kim has been pretty insistent to get an “expert” to take a look at it. It seems we are in luck today as the guy is in the shop and has an hour to spare. As we walk back to the boat I explain the issues we have been having and what I have so far identified. In short, our 3 battery banks are wrongly wired with inter connections, our house batteries are dying and have less then 50% capacity left in them, the windlass batteries are dying as they struggle to bring the anchor back on deck and the entire installation is pretty messy and dirty despite all the cleaning I have already done. As I open the engine compartment his first reaction is a big red flag.
“Oh, it looks really good”
“… “
Any decent sparky would not have made any positive compliment about our installation. He starts checking this and that.
“That’s Ok, that’s good, that’s ok”
I am more and more sceptical.
“That is strange”
Finally something but instead of investigating any further he moves on. Now he starts testing the batteries with a tool he seems to not fully understand and after a while he tells me that everything is fine.
“How can it be fine if every time we use the Genoa furler we get a low battery warning?!”
“Ok, unfurl it”
I do, but of course Kujira decides to be a bit of an ass, just like a kid at the doctors suddenly pretending he is fine while trying to prevent litres of snot dribbling down his nose. So we don’t get a low voltage warning.
“See, there is no problem”
I try to explain to him that, not witnessing something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist but this is futile. Next we get onto my concern about our batteries no longer holding charge.
Time for a little bit of electricity concepts: To simplify, we have 400 amp hour (Ah), which results in 12.6V. Once we drop to 12.2V, it means that the batteries are half empty, meaning we have only 200 Ah left. On the boat, our chart plotter gives us the voltage at all times and we have a meter which counts how many amps are going in and out of the batteries. It is all pretty simple math that even a monkey should be able to understand. During the day, our solar panels are producing so much energy that we don’t really need to worry. However as we crossed to Greece, I noticed that we reached 12.2V once we were down to 60 amps. Therefore, I could conclude that we have about 120Ah capacity left in our house battery banks. Not great.
“No, no, no, it is not how it works”
“Duh, yes it is”
“No, your counter, many tells the truth maybe not, probably not. Look, the needle on your (40 years old) display shows 12.6V”
Which only proves that they are as charged as they can be, that is, 120Ah or so. But he keeps going, telling me that it is too advanced electricity concept for me to understand and that the green dot on the battery is another sign that they are in great condition when in fact in only proves that they are full of acid but doesn’t give any other information.
As I have the feeling to be debating with a lamp post after a heavy night of drinking, I move on and show him the needle of our starter battery.
“This one is showing 12V, so that’s not great.”
“No, no, no, your guage is probably not working, are you able to start your engine? Yes, see that’s the proof that your batteries are fine”
That bloody moron is slowly really annoying me, but he keeps on going.
“See your meter measuring the amps, it is not working, right now it says -5 amps”
I have disconnected the solar panels.
“It is not possible, your light, it is 3 or 4 amps, your fridge, probably 15, if you understood Ohm law, you would understand”
I am internally fuming, that moron has obviously no clue what he is talking about.
Time for another break: Ohm law is so simple that I’ve learned it when I was 14 years old or so.
It is simply, voltage = current x resistance
What we actually care about right now is, Power = current x voltage
All of our lights are LED and use about 2W of power.
The voltage on the boat is 12V
So if we do a basic rule of three, we get: current = 2W/12V = 0.17 Amp and not 3 or 4.
The math for the fridge is even easier, it is written on it… 5 amps
At this point, I am done with this moron, he can get off by boat but he is on a roll.
“Your boat is what we call a motor-sailor. I mean, I know nothing about boats, but you have a big engine and a small battery bank”
How does he dare saying that Kujira has a small battery bank! And by the look of it, Kujira isn’t happy about this insult either as by now he is bouncing back and forth like a horse in a rodeo trying to get rid of the idiot on his back. Or maybe it’s just because the wind has suddenly picked up to 15-20 knots.
He concludes with the most absurd advice.
“You don’t have a problem with your batteries, I have proven it to you. All you need to do is run the engine more often”
“…”
“It will be 70 euros, to be paid cash, without invoice, thank you very much”
I tell him to come back later once I went to an ATM.
He gets off the boat leaving me fuming at which point Kim comes out
“I thought he was very throrough.”
I explode. Sorry Kim.
By Monday the time has come to leave if we want to make it on time to Patras to welcome Mike and Jana. Preveza was a fun place for a few nights with a good vibe, interesting neighbours, cheap yet delicious pita gyros, plenty of shops to re-supply and even an archaeological site nearby which nearly gave Kim a heat stroke. However, before we can go, I have to go back to the port authority to get Kujira’s check out stamp.
“Could you please stamp our transit log?”
He looks at me suspiciously.
“Take a seat”
By the look of it he has some nothingness to complete before dealing with me. After a while he waves at me. I hand over the transit log with a big smile knowing all to well that I just wasted my daily smile.
“I need the insurance paper, eTEPAI, crew list, passport, skipper licence”
“ … say what?!?”
“Quick quick”, he apparently has more nothingness to do.
Just to clarify a few things, we would not have been able to get our transit log without providing all these documents in the first place therefore there is no logical reason whatsoever to ask to see all these documents again unless he doubts Karen’s job.
“Really, even my skipper licence?” I have all the documents but this one with me.
“Yes, give me the documents, now.”
“Sorry, I’ll be back in 20 minutes”
I rush back to the boat, grab my skippers licence and head back to the land of Karen. After waiting some more for him to do some more nothingness, he takes a look at my documents. He seems pretty puzzled as to what to do with the transit log though. It even looks like he has never seen one before. So to help him out I try to tell him that we only need a stamp with the date.
“Ok, where are you going next?”
That’s an easy question.
“Patras”
“When?”
“Wednesday”
“Ok, come back tomorrow”
“ .. that’s not possible, we need to leave today”
“Ok, then you need to arrive in Patras today or tomorrow”
“.. That’s not possible, we are a sailboat, we can not go this fast”
Conundrum, what to do with us? I can see that he really wants to mess up my day but at the same time that would require some work, so he stamps the transit log and hands me back all the documents.
We depart the Preveza town quay without any major incident (meaning without damaging any boats, especially ours!) and we race towards the Lefkas canal. The wind conditions are great and we make it just on time for the 2pm bridge opening. The bridge operator has a bit of a reputation online: temperamental, not always on time, sometimes not even opening the bridge when he’s meant to, often closing it before all the boats have passed. We just make it but as we pass the bridge the bell starts ringing, the bridge is about to close. There are at least another dozen boats behind us and we’ll never know how many didn’t make it, but for sure some did not.
The canal is pretty long and you have to motor for almost an hour but once on the other side we are rewarded with our first real downwind sail. The wind is pretty strong but with only the mizzen and one reef in the Genoa, Kujira is flying and because we are sheltered by islands from nearly all directions there is literally no swell. Kujira is steady, flat, comfortable and we understand why people are so keen on downwind sailing compared to up wind sailing. What is crazy, is that it took us 1300 nautical miles before finally experiencing it. With well over 20 boats that came out of the canal at nearly the same time we can pick the boat we want to race and once they start beating us too badly we pick another one. Anyways, it doesn’t matter as they don’t even know we are racing them..
The afternoon is excellent and we reach our anchorage at around 5pm. Wedged between a rock jetty, a permanently parked boat and the anchor of a catamaran, I feel a bit uneasy so we decide to have a swim and push another mile to a long beach which offers all the space in the world. It turns out to be a smart move as the place is lovely, peaceful, with excellent holding ground, a prime view on the sunset and close enough to shore to hear the interlaced songs of frogs, birds, cicadas and the whistle of the wind in the trees. The place is so perfect that we decide to sleep outside.
Life is great.
With only 36h left before Mike and Jana arrive and 60Nm to go, we need to push on. The weather forecasts are in our favour with strong westerlies which should make for a fast and smooth ride. However, as so often, the reality is very different. The winds are light and fiddly, we try to sail but have to resolve ourselves to motor sail most of the day. Another lovely anchorage next to an empty sandy beach makes for another opportunity to sleep outside and enjoy the cooler temperature.
July 6th, with an early start, we finally make it to Patras, our meeting point with Mike and Jana. The town is so off the beaten tracks that the marina is out or order for cruisers so we have to park in the industrial port, next to tug boats and a cruise ship. It is our first side on parking since the fuel dock incident in Italy and we are nervous to say the least but all goes smoothly and a friendly guy from the port comes to catch our lines. Now “all” that is left to do is for me to check in Kujira with the local authorities.. The guy offers to take me there on the back of his vespa. I take on the offer despite hating these engines. To my delight, it is “Karen’s” friendly twin sister who works in Patras. She is friendly, polite, helpful, doesn’t ask stupid questions and happily stamps our transit log. As we are leaving the next day, she offers to do the check out stamp at the same time. I am still a bit skeptical about the utility of a check-in check-out stamp if every port is trying to do both at the same time. She only wants to know our next destination.
“Lefka maybe?”
“Ok, no problem.
Again, no stupid questions or nonsense about having to be there today or tomorrow, just a smile. Was Preveza an exception or is Patras the exception. We shall discover this during our next stop.
On my way back I bump into Mike and Jana, freshly out of the bus and totally jetlagged. The crew in now full and ready to sail together for the next 3 weeks and a bit all the way to Dubrovnik, a whooping 330Nm if we take the shortest route, or at least after a nap, a gyros and a good night’s sleep.
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