The Greek band playing traditional Greek music full of emotion has just left. Now it’s on to Disco, full of bass. We’re only 400 m away - ah, now the fireworks are starting! Siggie and Barbara are trying to sleep, but that may have to wait until the tripper boat picks up the crew that’s partying at the taverna!

So we did make it to Corfu. We left Catania on Sicily on the back end of the system, hoping for decent breeze from the North West. That lasted for one hour, but the Parasailor came out after a few hours of motoring so all was good. Until we were doing 10+ knots in 22kn of breeze straight from behind! At that point, it seemed prudent to put the lunch plates (and wine glasses) away and pull the Parasailor down …. We got to Rocella Ionica on the heel of Italy in 11 hours - covering 80 miles. Not bad. The next day we were back sailing early and again the Parasailor did its thing for much of the day. We got to the buoy where we needed to make a decision: turn left for another night in Italy or turn right for Greece - or rather, Albania. As a US boat, Kincsem can cruise in the EU for 18 months without being hit by 22% VAT and then we need to exit to “reset” the VAT exemption. Albania, being just a few miles from Corfu and not a EU country, is an easy target. The decision was unanimous: Albania it is. Again, we had a wonderful sail for most of the night - the engine did come on for a few hours in the wee hours but we made it to Sarante in Albania by early evening.

Albania was as expected, not as advertised. Yes, it’s a Communist country stuck in time a long time ago in many ways. It smells and is ugly. The restaurant we went to was extremely cheap but the food and wine were pretty bad. On the other hand, the clearance agent I hired and who dealt with the clearance procedures was extremely responsive on email and phone, spoke good English and was very efficient and cheap. We briefly considered staying for a day of sightseeing but were on our way to Corfu in the morning. There, another day of clearance procedures waited. Greece is part of the EU but they seem to do their best to keep all those people who were once on the state payroll on the payroll forever. Luckily, I have a bike so it was easy to cover the considerable distances between the various government offices to visit: first, the port police for checking the boat registration, passports and producing an official looking crew list. Then to customs in the ferry terminal for the “transit log” - a piece of paper of some 5 pages, completed by hand in triplicate with carbon copies (!!!). Then to immigration for the passport check and stamping. Then back to customs so they can check the stamps in the passport. Then back to the port police so they can check the transit log and the stamps in the passport and put their final stamp on the transit log. I would have been done in two hours with all of this had the US Coast Guard registration I had with me not been the one from 2016 …… All in all, three hours, Euro 45, and no bribes needed. Not bad for a late Friday afternoon.

Our one day in Corfu town was nice - there are a couple of old fortifications to see and climb, good restaurants and shops and everyone is friendly and most speak English. We stayed at the old ferry harbor moored “stern to” after looking around a bit for places to moor in the old commercial harbor where our handbook said to dock. The ferry harbor is very centrally located near the old town but there were some “absolutely no docking here” signs …. On the other hand, there were some other cruisers there, which gave us some comfort. There is no harbor captain or office, no marineros to help with docking and no fees to pay - a big change from Italy. Unfortunately, the harbor has a terrible stench which drove us away the next morning to this little bay, just a few miles away.