Mediterranean Sea
Northern Ionian Sea
Hellenic Republic of Greece
Corfu Island
Gouvia Marina +302661090309
SY "Kamu II" with her stern to the jetty and with two permanent bow moorings.
€ 245.- per month.Click below for a bird's-eye view of our marina berth:
Ignoring the Greek immigration office since we were travelling with German/European passports and clearing Greek customs in Corfu Town in a painful, slow and incredibly bureaucratic process where absolutely none of the useless and ignorant customs clerks (all with heavy chips on their classical Greek shoulders) wanted to make any decision about our South-African flagged ship and almost DIY helping them to find the right forms for a Greek transit log for a flat rate of € 30.-, renewable after six months but valid for one year.
Preparing our ship SY “Kamu II” for the 2004 sailing season: (i) replacing our worn out Bombard rubber duck with an unsinkable Italian hard tender made from double-walled polyethylene (for only € 350.-), (ii) replacing the corroded aluminium stanchions against new ones which had been tailor-made from stainless steel from the inox wizard Abdul in Monastir/Tunisia, (iii) painting the deck and the superstructure with two coats of white Hempel’s Poly Best, a reliable two-pack polyurethane topcoat which is durable and resistant to UV degradation and abrasion, (iv) installing a new 18-litre calorifier (combination electric water heater and water heat exchanger) which allowed us to heat water at the dockside with 220 V AC power and while underway using engine heat and (v) fitting a new Danfoss-BD35F-driven 60-litre fridge into the galley thus increasing our storage capacity for the infamous retsina, a resinated local white wine.
Refuelling our main tank up to the brim with 160 litres of diesel fuel for € 0.74 per litre from the convenient fuel berth inside the marina.
Exploring Corfu Town, another UNESCO World Heritage Site, which stands on the broad part of a peninsula, whose termination in the old Venetian citadel is cut off from it by an artificial fosse formed in a natural gully, a labyrinth of narrow streets paved with cobblestones, admiring the 6th-century BCE Gorgon Medusa (depicted just before being beheaded by Perseus) in the Archaeological Museum, sipping Turkish coffees and eating Greek salads in countless open-air sidewalk cafes, counting and re-counting the number of winged Lions of St. Mark, the symbol of Venice, in the new Venetian citadel and strolling between the Liston and the Spianada.
Touring the N part of Corfu Island with a hired Hyundai Atos for € 30.- per day, visiting the fishing and farming villages Feakes, Kassopei, Roda and Palaiokastritsa and ascending (on a narrow road with a number of hairpin bends) the 906-m high Mt. Pantokrator from where we could see the whole of Corfu Island as well as the mountains in Albania.
Visiting the Ipapanti Church on a peninsula in the Gouvia Bay and watching a ceremony of Greek-Orthodox baptism which was very rich with symbolism and where every step of the long procedure (from the exorcism at the church entrance via the triple full immersion of the little girl in holy water to her embrocation with olive oil) figured “the journey from evil into the light of love (for Jesus)”.
Reflecting on our 2003 cruising year, re-defining sailing in the autumnal Adriatic as "motoring from gale to gale", counting the total of 12 visited UNESCO World Heritage Sites and discussing our common travel goals for Greece and Turkey
