Whew, we are back in the water! A whole year out on the hard for Right Meow and we were all happy to see her back in her element.
The next round of system start ups began as soon as we splashed, and after checking all the bilges for leaks! The engines turned over and we made the short trip to the Right side of the concrete dock. We were the last boat to go in that day so there wasn’t much daylight left. About the time the boat was moving from the trailer into the Travelift slings, our paperwork lady Sophia came by with our documents.
We had to get the boat out of “bond” to prove it had been stored on the hard and was not being used for cruising until our relaunch date. Then we needed to show proof of arrival in the Schengen region so they could see we hadn’t overstayed the 3 months allotted. We also needed our transit log which is the log that gets stamped at every port you enter. Lastly we had to purchase the cruising tax for October. This all requires trips back and forth between the Port Police and Customs, and unfortunately as Todd discovered last year, the Preveza Port Police and Customs folks were the least efficient group in all the area’s we had been too. For 70 euro, Sophia took care of all the back and forths for us. The only glitch was the cruising tax showed we had paid for September instead of October. In the end Sophia was able to make a change to the document which we printed off and could show whomever might request it. Fingers are crossed that this will be enough!