Friday was spent taking care of the clearing out procedures and necessitated a cab ride into Corfu. Todd started at the port police who reviewed the cruising tax form (TEPAI) making sure we had paid, and prepared a crew list in Greek for customs. The next step was a trip over to customs and passport control. The passport control officer efficiently stamped our passports so we were now stamped out of the country. Then there was a 40 minute wait while the customs officer returned to his desk. This guy took the transit log (which you have to hand in when you leave the country), and then proceeded to berate Todd for 10 minutes over the cruising tax error with paying September instead of October. Todd kept his cool and finally the officer grudgingly completed the paper work. Whew!
My job was to source whole coffee beans and a supply of wine, hopefully from a barrel that I could taste first. We had tried buying bottles off the shelf but without local knowledge, this had been pretty unsuccessful.
We both completed our respective jobs and met at a coffee shop a few kilometers out of town in an area with home appliance stores. Spending the coming winter season aboard meant we would be needing a dehumidifier to help keep the boat dry. (You would be amazed at how much condensation occurs from just breathing and cooking!) Fortunately there was a good selection between the 2 stores, and we chose a medium sized and priced unit that we thought would take care of our needs.
It was a shorter cab ride back to the Gouvia Marina where we finished prepping the boat for departure, including getting a big pot of chicken soup made for the overnight trip the next day. We were going to top up the water tanks and had paid for 10 euro of “drinking” water, but when we tested it with the TDS (total dissolved solids) meter, it was over 850 ppm after passing through our in-line carbon filter. This was pretty disappointing as we liked it to be 300 ppm or less, so we didn’t fill our galley tank. We would have plenty of time to exercise the watermaker on the trip!