Thursday 15 June 2017 – Zea Marina, Athens

As you can see we did not get a berth at Vouliagmeni.  We rang them in the morning and they said that they were waiting to hear from another boat and would not know if a berth were available until 2 or 3pm.  That would not do so we gave up on them.  I tried another marina a Glyfada but they did not even answer their telephone.  So obviously no luck there.  So we contacted Zea where we have a 100 Euro credit from not spending the high season here in 2015 and which we couldn’t use last year because of our truncated sailing season due to Richard’s health.  They were fine about everything and reserved us a space and confirmed we could use our credit.

We really did have to leave Sounion.  Beautiful spot though is was, it was horribly rolly and uncomfortable.  At some times the rolling was so bad that things fell over and the booze bottles in their special cupboard were clinking terribly.  I felt so bad that I had to take a seasick pill!.  So we set off a 9 am.  Another day of motoring in very little wind indeed.  We didn’t even try to put the sails up.  We made good progress and got here at 2:30pm.  We checked in and found that the port police are right near our boat, so we decided to try to update our boat permit.  That turned into a marathon.  There was a huge queue and we spent most of the afternoon filling in forms and waiting for the right person to process the documents.  Luckily we were well prepared and had everything they needed.  The only problem was when we finished they said the permit would be ready at their offices in a week!  We explained that we were moving on and finally the officer said he would have it tomorrow if we turn up at 1PM.  So we won’t be able to go into Athens tomorrow.  We will do domestics and then go in on Saturday.

It has been boiling hot here.  We had thought we would get to a local beach, but the time at the Port Police put paid to that.  Perhaps tomorrow in the midst of re-provisioning, getting laundry done, refilling the fuel and getting our permit!

The marina is a big bustling place.  The first part is all filled with what I guess you would call super yachts (if not the biggest sort).  One yacht had two tankers at it filling it with fuel for over 3 hours!  Half way through I saw one of the tankers showing delivery of 7000 litres of fuel!


So I will try to get some sleep in this heat and see what we can accomplish tomorrow.

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