Approaching Corfu

After 54 hours of sailing, I was looking forward to the moment I could shout: "land in sight!!!". Not that I hadn't seen land during my crossing, I sailed rather close to the Albanian coast, so I saw land during most of my crossing. But it is always a special moment when you see your destination island for the first time. So I was very disappointed, when I had approached Corfu till 10 km I saw this:

Corfu

Let me take a second look, a third look. No, Corfu is still not visible!!! The number of cruise ships, and ferries was a good indication that I was very near. And of course the GPS. I just missed the euforia moment of "land in sight".

The big advantage of clouds is that I was treated to the most romantic sunset ever.

This sky compensates everything!

I thought that entering Europe woud be easy. I am European, the boat is European, should be easy. No more former Eastern European bureaucratie, just plain Europe. I was terribly wrong. When I arrived in the main port of Corfu at 22:00 I was sent away. "The customs is closed" someone shouted to me, "go to the Marina". The Marina was a little further, so by the time I was berthed, it was just after midnight. First a hot shower, and than a long sleep. During my crossing I had woken up every 15 minutes, just to check I was heading in the right direction, and that there was no dangerous shipping in the area. So I was really looking forward to a long not interrupted sleep. The next morning I woke up at 7 o'clock, so apparantly I was not very exhausted. At 9 I went to the harbour office to clear customs. There I could not clear customs, they were only capable of clearing boats that had arrived from an other EU country. Well to cut a long story short, I went back to the Customs in the main port by bus, there the refused a stamp because the boat was not there. In the end Madame Curie cleard customs 3 days after I had cleared. When the port police asked when I had actually arrived I stated that there had been a misunderstanding. No problem, the 3 days were excepted. The "value' of a stamp is a lot less in Greece than it is in Croatia.