Sailing Season 2 Greece!

Hello friends! It’s been ages since I updated our blog and sent out news. We have truly been living in the present and enjoying each and every moment fully. I have only pushed out a few social media updates on Facebook and Instagram and Kivanc has not released any Greece YouTube videos yet. We are way behind, so I’ll give a high-level summary of our last few months at sea.

After a winter break, Kivanc was in Istanbul and spent time with his mom and me in California, we reunited in Croatia at the end of March. Sea Bee spent the winter there and we had much work to do to get her ready and prepped for our voyage to Greece. By early May we said goodbye to Croatia and sailed to the port authority in Dubrovnik to check out of the country. Now there is a lot of bureaucracy connected to sailing - endless paperwork, insurance, registration, cruising taxes, tourist taxes, crew lists, etc. everything must be in perfect order when checking in and out of countries on a sailboat and local laws and rules change all the time. It’s different from flying as all you need to do is show your passport and maybe a visa to enter and leave a country. A famous cruising YouTuber posted a very dramatic video of his checkout experience in Croatia, with undercover cameras and claims of corruption. So we were a little nervous when we arrived at the port authority. However, our experience couldn’t have been quicker or smother - under 10 minutes. Later we learned from a Croatian friend the YouTuber had not paid one of the required cruising taxes and that was why he had some trouble. His Youtube video generated a lot of negative press for Croatia so Croatian officials investigated his claims and published a news article about his experience and documented an error he made with his paperwork. Only those directly involved know the truth about this instance. We can only speak of our experiences in Croatia and over the last year living and sailing there we did not encounter any corruption and found the people to be very honest.

Our first stop after departing Croatia was Montenegro. It was an easy all-day sail from Dubrovnik to Porto Montenegro. We decided to check in at Porto Montenegro in Tivat which is a beautiful state-of-the-art marina with a hotel, condos, restaurants, and a shopping area with designer boutiques. The real reason we decided to check into the country here is that they offer a really easy experience. They have a customs office and port authority right next to their marina. An agent meets you and walks you to the various offices inside one building and your check-in is completed right away. Afterwards a Marinero helps you dock your boat at the marina. As soon as we walked off the boat to explore the area, I felt like I was transported to the Broadway Plaza shopping area in Walnut Creek California! It was all very nice but I did not feel like I stepped foot in the real Montenegro with all these new shops and restaurants around me. The next day we rented a car and did some exploring to get a better sense of the country. We went to Budva, Kotor & Perast. All stunning and beautiful places but Kotor has to be our favorite.

Everywhere we went we noticed lots of Turkish people. Not just tourists but folks living and working there as shop owners. Everywhere we turned someone was speaking Turkish. We found this so unexpected and interesting, that we finally asked a Montenegro taxi driver about this one evening. The taxi driver told us they love the Turks because when they come the locals can rent them an apartment and get twice the amount they would receive from a local. We believe many Turkish people have established businesses here in order to receive residency and very soon Montenegro will be part of the EU and so will they. Smart! We also saw signs advertising properties for sale and with that comes residency in Montenegro.

Montenegro has many similarities to Croatia - the medieval architecture in their old towns and the dramatic seaside mountains. We found the food had more variety and the people were friendlier + the shopping was much better and cheaper! We were able to go to a few nice chandleries to buy boat supplies and provision the boat from nice grocery stories with a wide range of products.

After a week docked at Porto Montenegro, we found a good weather window to make our first big passage to Corfu, Greece. If you leave very early in the morning this 200+ nautical mile passage can be done in two days, with just one night at sea. But as with everything connected to sailing, weather dictates all our decisions and it was best to leave in the late afternoon, which meant three days and two nights at sea for us. This was our first time sailing non-stop and through the night. I was a bit nervous when my first night watch came, as it would be the first time I’m sailing Sea Bee alone + at night. We were lucky to have a full moon to sail by, the sky and night were bright and I could see the beautiful Albanian coast next to me. It's actually a wonderful thing to sail at night all by yourself. The conditions were perfect and the only thing I needed to do was change course, as massive cruise ships came toward me. By the time we arrived in Corfu we were exhausted - other than that it was a smooth sail and cool experience!

Corfu is an island I could easily live on. It’s large, has a wonderful old town with lots of culture, great restaurants, and good shopping. Not to mention it’s stunning! I have always been curious about Corfu and I had some high exceptions - it did not disappoint. The east coast of the island, right across from Albania has the best anchorages, so we spent most of our time here. We did rent a car one day to explore the north and west side of the island. Everything seems to grow there - citrus, fruit trees, vegetables, and flowers abound - it’s just lovely!

On our third day, something extraordinary happened. We met and became friends with several cruisers in an anchorage - happy hours and dinners onboard were had! This was so exciting to us because the whole time in Croatia we only met a couple of other cruisers and only made a small handful of friends. This is because the vast majority of sailors in Croatia are on charter boats. They are with their family and friends enjoying their 1-2 week sailing vacation and not really interested in meeting people outside their group. In fact, Croatia dominates the sailing charter market. I’m not positive if this number is correct but I was told Croatia has 60-70% of the world's charter market. It certainly felt like that. Well, Greece is exactly what we imagined this cruising lifestyle to be! You see more cruisers than charter boats here and we are making friends and talking to other sailors all the time. We love the Greek people, the food, the free anchorages, and the beauty and culture that Greece has to offer. But we do miss the Croatian wine BIG TIME!

The one sailing challenge or headache while sailing in Greece is the bureaucracy. As I mentioned above there is a lot of bureaucracy connected to sailing in general but Greece certainly wins the prize! We spent hours filling out complicated forms to pay TEPAI the Greek cruising tax (which is not cheap for 3 months). We spent several more hours checking in with port police and clearing customs in Corfu. Plus every time you come into a new port in Greece, guess what? You have to check in with the local port police to get your “transit log” stamped. If you have guests come on board you need to change your crew list and that means going to the port police again with them and their passports to update that document. The Greek government passed a new law last month connected to boat insurance and our insurance didn’t have this new clause and special certificate they require now. We spent a whole day on the phone and emailing our insurance company to get this added and of course pay more $$$. Besides all this red tape and thankfully I’m pretty good at navigating my way through this kind of stuff, Greece is pure magic!

We have three months here in Greece before we enter Turkey later this summer. We slowly explored the gorgeous Ionian islands and while we were there we were able to connect with Kostas a wonderful Greek guy who lives in New York and has been following Sea Bee for the past year. He coincidently happened to be sailing the Ionian islands at the same time as us. It was such a treat to meet him and his group of friends! We are currently at the southern Peloponnese waiting on a good weather window to make the crossing into the Aegean Sea and over to the Cyclades islands. Our first stop will be Milos. We learned about this beautiful island from some new friends we made in Ithaki - a couple from Turkey who happens to live and keep their boat in Fethiye. Fethiye is where we hope to keep Sea Bee this winter - inshallah! This next leg of our sailing journey will be very interesting. The Cyclades have the charming whitewashed cubism architecture that Greece is famous for, along with the beautiful turquoise water. But it also has the infamous Meltemi winds which can blow 45 knots+ for 10 days straight. Delights and frights await us!

I wanted to close by answering a number of questions I get around the “real boat life” and what it’s really like when we are not sipping sundowners in beautiful blue anchorages. I will first start out with a word of caution. Do not attempt or even think about doing something like this with your partner unless you have a very strong and healthy relationship. If you could not handle working from home in the same house as your partner when Covid hit and seeing them every waking second - do not live on a sailboat with them! If you think a sailing adventure will make your already challenged relationship better and bring you closer - it will not. Sailing brings out the very worst inside you and tests your limits. You will see the worst side of your partner and yourself. There is so much pressure and stress connected to sailing, especially when the weather is wild. Anchoring a boat safely and in a crowded anchorage is an art form that only comes with experience. (Kivanc just learned an incredible anchoring technique from a Turkish captain that he will share on one of his future videos.) Sailing is very demanding and physical - the fatigue of sailing day after day is real. Everything on a boat breaks - sun and sea are not kind to boats. We spent three horrible days unclogging our head (boat toilet). We learned the hard way about calcium/scale build-up in pipes. Urine and seawater create this over time and cause a thick, hard, rock-like wall to form inside all the plumbing and it smells disgusting!!! We had to open up and clean/break this out of every pipe, seacock, valve, etc.. not an easy job! We have had our engine stop working, water pressure stop, water heater break, etc.. the list goes on. Cleaning and maintaining the boat takes up half our time - honestly! Sailing is not for the lazy there is always something that needs your attention. There is also no air conditioner on Sea Bee, we have to deal with crazy summer heat and being bitten by mosquitoes each night. We have a limited water supply for washing and showers and no washer/drier onboard to clean our clothes with. Oh, and did I already mention the boat bureaucracy. Despite all the cons, if you love sailing, traveling, hard work, have a strong relationship with your partner, and want a very unique lifestyle closely connected to nature nothing beats this. The highs are so high and yes there are plenty of days when the weather cooperates, something doesn't break and we find ourselves in a beautiful bay sipping on champagne. If there weren't days like these we would never be doing this. So with that said, I leave you with a pic from one of those champagne moments!