Checking In In Greece

June 19-01

 

We have completed the Eastern Mediterranean Rally and anchored in  wonderful Turkey to just chill out and rest up. Our next destination is Greece. Greece is good but two things have changed for us as we make our way alone to historical Rhodes. First the weather has changed from gentle calms to strong west or northwest winds. (The direction we must go.) More importantly now I must go thru the entry procedures with Costumes and Intimidation all by myself. No rally organizers to smooth the way.

Rhodes is not our first port without help, but it is the one where we most needed it. Rhodes is a big cruise ship destination and has a large pleasure boat harbor as well. This means that it must have a large staff to check all of those tourists onto the island. It has to have separate kinds of staffs, one for the cruise ships, a second one to service the many charter boats based there, plus the day trip tourist boats from the surrounding islands and for dinky small yachts like us that are dropping in from foreign ports, probably six to ten each day.

My guess is that the big ship Immigration, Customs, and Port Control authorities are paid more than the small boat staff, which means that we might get a beginner or two somewhere along the line.          

Checking into Rhodes wasn’t too bad. The Immigration person was a very pleasant lady but you guessed it she was a beginner. Now this lady works in the second office off the dock right after the Port Control office. I of course stop at the first office first, wrong, for the guy in the crisp white uniform in that office is the last one to see.  So I go next door to the second office and start my check in procedure of this European Union country with the nice NEW Immigration official.

First I must fill out a long form stating where, why, who, what, and when in quadruplicate. She puts in two sheets of carbon paper, which will only make three copies, I suggest that I need another sheet, but she assures me that two are enough.  Sure enough when after ten minutes I hand in my paperwork, she says, “Oh, sorry, sir you must do another page”. Hey! She’s sorry and smiley so I make yet another copy.

          After completing my four copies, I must now go to the Customs office to get the forms stamped. This guy was fast and no forms to fill out just stamp, stamp, stamp, and I’m back again to  the original lady, but I must wait for she is trying to help a French couple that doesn’t speak Greek, or much English either. After ten minutes they leave shaking their heads without getting signed in.

She now looks at me and asks for 56,000 drachma for my transit log. “Wait!” I say to her, “I just got off the boat and I have no drachma, will you take US dollars?” “No, you must have the correct currency.”

            I have been to Rhodes before, so off I go. It only takes about ten minutes to the bank machine in the new part of the city, so I’m back in a half an hour. When I get back to the office, it’s locked, no nice lady anywhere! As I head to the boat, my thoughts are of how easy it is to travel in a rally! good cheer.

            Giving the custom agent a half hour for lunch and sipping on an afternoon glass of  cheer it’s back to continue checking into Greece. Luck is with me,the door is open and the nice lady is back. I pay my money and she sends me next door with my stamped travel permit, to get it stamped by the Port Control, (Coast Guard), officer. He puts his stamp on the proper page and sends me back to you know where again. He was supposed to give me a stamped crew list, but I have none. She marches me right back and the two of them get in a six to ten minute heated debate about the crew list. Finally she gives in and says; “ Ok, you’re free to go. Yea! I head back to the boat again all checked in, I think!!! 

            As we are ready to leave a few days later, I must reverse this procedure which  became even longer and funnier, except I wasn’t laughing by the time I was finished.

            First I have to go to the Harbor Control office and pay my mooring fees and electric charges, which I do by nine o’clock. Well I paid my mooring fees, but someone must first read the electric meter before I can get my release paper signed to take to the port control office. I convince the guy to sign the paper and I will come back and pay the electric later.

I go the port control office, to see the same guy that had checked me in upon arrival there I am told that he could not check me out, and that I must go to the main port control office up town.

            Having been in Rhodes before I also knew where the main port control office was located. Just add another ten-minute walk on the main street past the bank.I knew from last falls visit that I should go down to the lower level offices to get my clearance, which I did.

            There are four desks behind the counter with three women, two in Port control dress white uniforms, and on older woman in brown plain clothes and one young male officer sitting nearby. Nobody looks up as I come to the counter, so I try to see who is not busy by looking first at the older lady. In Turkey, they wear a small colorful blue eye shaped stone to ward off the evil eye, wish I had one just then. Ok, next down the line is a pretty blond girl I look gently at her, but she is looking at her computer screen much too busy eating a baguette to notice me. So I stand patiently in front of the third women and wait for her to see the invisible person standing just four feet in front of her. She glances at me and I take that as my clue to hand her my papers. She hands me forms to fill out just like the ones I filled out in Quadruplicate when I had checked in a week ago. 

After everything is filled out and in order, I pay some small fee for something, but she does not have change in her small purse. She looks at the old hag with the evil eye and gets it cast on her as well.

The blonde has no change either, spent it on the baguette, and so she goes back to another older man sitting behind a bigger desk, Ha! He has change in a wooden box beside his desk. I get my change, and she is stamping the last page when her phone rings. She stops stamping and starts talking. While talking on one phone another phone rings, she picks that up too, and a phone in both hands means no stampie my papers. I wait. It was only a few minutes, but I am trying to make 25 miles today. She hands me one last piece of paper, which I must take upstairs to the security officer to have stamped there.

I proceed upstairs and find a DUMB male receptionist, for I show him the papers that have to be signed and he nods his head negatively. I say security finally and he motions with his hand to go up the stairs then motions to go right at the first hallway and go to the end. Up the stairs and then right I go, but when I get there it’s the toilet, I guess he didn’t understand my English after all.

Well there was an office almost at the end, so I backed up and went into it. Two men, one in uniform, the other in plain clothes were busy doing whatever security guys do, but they took time to stamp my paper, plus enter me into the security log book, I’m now secure, why do I need to be secured I’m leaving?

Back down to the lady that took my money for my last piece of paper with the Harbor Control stamp. After a two and a half hour quest, she stamps the last stamp to be stamped and away I go back to the boat to finally cast off for the open sea again.

Luckily its only five hours sailing time to our next stop, Linos a very nice small cove with a large Crusader Castle overlooking the sandy beach. We were glad to get there before dark, for we did have a rather late start.

The next day we start early for we have 56 miles to go to reach the next harbor, the only harbor on the Island of Karpathos.

We are six hours out to sea, and change one starts to rear its ugly head. Yep, a strong head wind, and then more wind, and more, and even more until we see 45 knots. We are on the calm side of the island but the wind is blasting down the back side of the bare hills like the flow of air over an airplane wing. This is not good so we turn tail and motor as fast as we can back to the port we had passed an hour earlier. Not a good place to go for it is very open to the

north winds. This was like blasting into a howling nor-Easter on Lake Erie, big angry seas with the wind blowing the tops of the waves back into our faces.

It took us two hours at almost full throttle to cover four miles. Then it took two additional hours even with the help of several Greek fishermen on the dock to get us anchored and tied up to the inner sea wall. It was so bad the big, 300 ft ferry boat had stopped running that day. Even with our two biggest anchors deployed on extra long lines we were in a very unsafe place. The six to seven foot waves were entering the harbor traveling mostly under us and then crashing to death on the six foot concrete wall just behind us. They would explode in a vast seething foamy spray up into the air and roll on over the quay. Often the spray would blast back onto our open stern and fling salt water into the cockpit.

Luckily a middle aged Greek man, who had lived for several years in the US, braved the crashing waters and said that he would help us move to a safer place.

We quickly agreed and with his help got a long line over to a commercial fishing boat . Once we got the line to the fishing boat one of the deck hands took the line over to the biggest of three boats. That fisherman then took our line out to the bow of his boat and tied us up. By running our engine in fast forward and hauling in on our line we moved further over to the east and got more behind the outer break wall and the three big fishing boats. This action got us out of the biggest waves and eliminated the seas from splashing into the cockpit. We were stuck on the boat for the rest of the day, but we were still grinning for we now were safe from the howling winds and raging waves.

We waited an extra day for the winds and sea to die down, and then we left by 0630 for Crete motoring in light air. By ten we were sailing fine but with the wind on the starboard bow, and just able to maintain our course to Crete.

One hour later and we have a reef in the Mainsail. One hour later we have the headsail off and are making 7 knots with the reef and staysail. Two hours the headsail is back and the winds are down to 14, but the wind has come around 15 degrees to the left and we are now heading to the south of Crete instead of the north of it. Another couple of hours go by and the wind is down to eight, so in comes the jib and staysail and on goes the motor. 

 I won’t go into the failed attempt to anchor in a little cove behind an island just north of Crete, but know it would have been a beautiful overnight stop had we found even a little sand or mud to stick our two anchors in.

Instead we motored thru the rolling swells into the harbor of Sitia Crete, and checked into the Harbor Control there, no problem, and had a nice quiet night tied to a big commercial dock.

The next day we motor sail 25 km into the nice marina at Aghios Nickolaos, and yet another Med-moor tie-up in the harbor without any rally person standing on the quay to help us as we had been accustomed too.

                  Back to change one, the authorities. It’s only a fifteen-minute walk thru the nice little resort village over the hill to the main port to check in with port control.

 We had been to the village before, but remember the last time the Millennium Rally people had the Port control people come to the marina to check us in and out.

I do find the place ok, and proceed to check in. Out of the 10 men in the office I get a very nice pleasant young man in Port Control in the usual white uniform to assist me right away. I notice he has no stripes on his shirtsleeves, and everyone else seems to, but he is friendly and gets started right away. He asks of course to see my Greece transit log.

“Sure here it is”.

 He says, “Thanks, and can I see a copy of your ships registration papers”?

I say, “Sure here there are”, as I hand it too him.

He then takes them both into a back room and after five minutes he comes back, and says, “You have a problem here”.

What I ask?

He said, “This documentation is dated 1999 and the US government will really be upset if you do not get this corrected”.

I say, “You asked for a copy and that’s what I gave you. Here is the real one and it has the proper 2001 stamp on it”.

With a disappointed look on his face away he goes again, but this time he takes my passport as well. Luckily I had stopped and bought a USA Today newspaper so I read it for the ten minutes he was gone again.

 After thoroughly reading several pages of my USA today he comes back with my passport and promptly says, “you have another problem here”.

Lowering my USA Today slowly, I look up as he seems to tower over me and ask quietly, “Yes what is that”.

He says, ”Your passport has no entry stamp showing that you have entered Greece”.

Well now I think back to the nice lady at immigration in Rhodes who was supposed to do the proper stamping, and the argument she had with the Port Control officer. Then I think even farther back to our last visit here and the problems the Polish sailboat delivery captain had in this same port, jail!!! Who me? It can’t happen to me can it? Ah SHUCKS!

During the Millennium Odyssey Rally we rallyers often referred to Customs and Immigration as, Costumes and Intimidation! Ha, how appropriate those endearments are right now!

To make this long story shorter lets just say he found, after some heated discussions with his superior officers, a fuzzy almost unreadable Greek stamp on an almost full page of my passport. It was almost the correct date as when we had entered the ancient city of Rhodes, its over.

So with a friendly, sorry for the trouble kind of apology, he returned all of my papers and my passport to me with my Transit log finally officially stamped.

Great only two plus hours later we are freed to go. Rally Control, Rally Control, where are you Rally Control????         

We are back aboard good old Que Sera Sera, which has been berthed here in Agios Nickalos, Crete for the better part of a month while we were off touring some of the wonders of Europe.

The day after we arrived back aboard a 15 year old wooden sailboat pulls into the dock just to our stern. The Boat looks a little rough and a lot weather-beaten. I meet the Captain, a man of fifty something who is from Poland. He states that a friend of his also from Poland has asked him to bring the boat from Sudan where it has been at a mooring for several weeks, to Croatia where it will get some badly needed repairs.

There are four men including the Captain aboard, two of which leave the boat the next morning to fly back to Poland.

I happen to make some small talk with one of the crew, and he tells me of their miserable windward slog up the Red Sea and the Gulf of Suez. He related that they did stop to do some Scuba diving several times in the crystal clear waters around some of the islands that they had stopped at. This is pretty much the standard procedure when heading north, for when the north winds blow, you stop and wait.

This all sounds pretty innocent to me, and when the Captain and the remaining crewman want to go out for a big dinner in town he asks me to turn on the manual bilge pump in about an hour. “Sure” I of course tell him, “show me the switch”. He does stating that now after the windward slog there is a big leak, as old wooden boats usually get, and they only have a manual switch to operate the bilge pump.

So an hour or so later I climb aboard and flip the switch, the bilge pump runs for six or eight minutes when I hear the pump suck air I shut the switch off and get back off the boat, no problem.

No! the problem comes down the dock at about 2 PM the next day in the form of two official looking men in white uniforms. There are three others as well who look like officials, but they are in plainclothes, and one man is leading a dog. I tell my mate here comes trouble and we both duck below decks. Lucky for us when they all get to the stern of Que Sera they turn toward the Polish Boat behind us.

Sure enough they proceed aboard the Polish boat and start a very thorough search for drugs with the dog sniffing away all over the boat. The dog is back on deck in five or so minutes which would seem to say it found nothing, but the two plain-cloths men are still keep searching below. Almost an hour later and several dark recesses of the boat having been opened up, out come the two of the searchers with four or five oblong objects wrapped in plastic bags.

Ha! They have found the drugs! No! As they unwrapped the plastic bags they discovered old ceramic vases, maybe rare sunken treasures then. Ha! Ha! Got ya they smile, and ask the crew member where did these vases come from. “I bought them,” he says. “Where” asks the agent of doom, and “do you have a receipt”? “No” says the very somber crewman. Ha! Ha! Ha! Says the Customs agent just what we suspected from this lowly old craft from Poland.

I must report that I am really not hearing all of this conversation, for I am trying to look innocent and innocuous by sanding the bright work on the stern of the boat. So perhaps a word or two slipped past my ear as the sandpaper scraped to and fro. Plus perhaps I have added a word or two as well, but most of this report is mostly factual.

A short time latter one of the white uniformed officials’ hurries off the dock to the Marina office. Five minutes later two more important looking men show up at the dock one coming in by a small launch. By now there are four men standing on the dock behind Que Sera, two other men are standing on the foredeck of the subject boat, with maybe three men still tearing apart the interior of the now dissembled boat, oh and still the dog is sitting at the ready on deck.

The new arrivals must have been Masters of the Antiquities Division of Archeology Parathion Group, Crete, Greece, for they are really studying the clay pots brought up from the deep of the damp and foul smelling bilge. I know it was a foul smelling bilge for the guys that came out after the search were very damp and foul smelling indeed. The ambient temperature above decks was close to 87 degrees in the shade. Come to think of it even the two men in white official uniforms standing on the dock were a little smelly by now as well.

After about three hours of this search, the whole search team, the Antiquities team, the deck team or what ever they were, and the white uniform team finally get off the boat. Oh, and last off the boat and in no real hurry was the dog. They all head off the dock in a pretty jovial mood. Unfortunately behind them followed the not too jovial Polish Captain and his crewman.

In that my bright work sanding had now taken me right to the very stern of my vessel I was able to question the Captain what’s up? As he left his boat, he said “Some one has put out a word against us for something. They are using the pottery to further question us so who knows, but I think that there was a problem with the previous delivery Captain”.

Let me now describe the two of the five clay pots that were unwrapped on the dock just six feet from my camouflaged position under the bimini, behind the stern anchor, below the outboard engine, in a vast cloud of sanding dust on Que Sera.

OK! Here goes, They were round on the bottom with a long narrow neck topped by a small flared opening, the round part was maybe five or six inches in diameter. The neck was about one and a half inches in diameter and the opening at the top about two inches in diameter, and they were about 12 inches tall. They were light gray in color without any noticeable markings, colors or carvings on them. They looked like they had been buried under ground or under water for a long time, and I, who used to make pottery, would not have given a dime for them both. But maybe the other three were magnificent vessels worth millions perhaps, possibly, probably not.

Time passes and it is now twenty-eight hours after the group of officials walked off the dock with the Polish Captain and his nice guy, Mark the crew in tow, and they are still gone.

Some facts to consider. This is the first port in Greece that they had stopped in. So the rare Artifacts were not purchased or stolen in Greece. It is possible that they stopped offshore and bought them from a Greek fisherman who brought then up from the deep in his fishing nets, sure!

They could have been stashed aboard the boat when they got on the boat in Sudan, but I did hear the crewman say that he bought them, and answer the officer that he did not have the receipt, so that’s not likely either.

So he bought it in a foreign country out side of Greece, let’s say Egypt. Why would that be illegal?

The problem now is that these men are in custody of the local officials, and they have no rights what so ever. They could be locked up until whenever, and who’s to do something about it? Me? No way for if they come aboard this boat and find all the bottles of Italian wine I have stored aboard I’m in Jail for a century. They will take Lois also for she has smuggled at least twelve, maybe eighteen, foreign china head dolls aboard as well. We’re history if they catch us.

Oh shucks! I was aboard that Polish boat, what if they find my fingerprints on the bilge pump switch? Guess I would miss the last Millennium Odyssey rally party next Monday if they find those babies.

So tomorrow I’ll be back at my bright work sanding project, and you can be sure I’ll be keeping my eyes open, my nose to the grind stone, and my ears glued to the on going Saga at Agios Nickolaos Crete Greece.

Tomorrow is here, and as a matter of fact it is six in the afternoon tomorrow, and still the skipper and his crew are not back to their boat. I have been pressed into turning on the bilge pump switch today in their absence so as not to have the old girl head for the depths.

I’m not worried about finger prints any more though, for I have been sanding the stern of my boat steady for two days now so as not to miss any new tidbits that might be forthcoming. In so doing have worn all the skin off my fingers tips, alas no more fingerprints are to be detected.

Here now at about fifty six hours, fourteen minutes, and eight seconds after their departure, down the dock walks the Captain and his Mate, looking I might add very glum. They went promptly aboard their vessel and disappeared for the night.

The next morning however a see them standing on the dock talking very man to man, so I take up my sand paper and get to work once again on the stern bright-work, which by the way is getting pretty dull by now from all this repetitious sanding.

So I asked the skipper what the heck happened. He said, “Well someone must have alerted Interpol that the boat was here for they came looking for drugs. They found none, but did find some old pots aboard and some picture negatives taken with an underwater camera of the pottery, so they suspected that we were part of an artifact smuggling ring”.

“The new Polish owner says that he found the pottery while diving in the south of the Red Sea. But he did not tell us that they were aboard the boat when we picked it up in Port Sudan. He has been talking with the police on the phone, and has worked things out with them, I think”.

“He is sending bail money, and all of the necessary documentation work necessary to get us clear passage to Croatia from Greece”.  ”The trouble now is that I had to put up the money from my own personal funds to get us out of jail rather than wait for the money to get here by mail from Poland”. “Now we have no money to buy provisions, nor a new anchor, and other necessary equipment to get the boat ready to go”.

He also stated, “That as delivery captain he should have gone over the vessel completely, but that there were so may safety problems which needed attended to, plus the boat was a friend’s boat, thus I did not check it out like I should have.”

We set sail for other delightful islands of Greece the next day, and so we do not know how this story ended, but perhaps the moral of this story is that the Captain is responsible.

Most of us are the owner and captain of our yachts, and should certainly know what’s aboard. If someone, somewhere, slips something aboard our vessel unknown, we may well be in harms way. And worse yet, we may even end up in the jail of some small foreign country awaiting justice that may not be forth coming.

As Captain Horatio Hornblower oft stated, “be thou always aware”

Don A Babson:   Yacht Que Sera Sera