Sofia

On Saturday we take delivery of our Belize in Lefkas. Then on Sunday morning Sofia arrives, and she will be at our side as a sailing instructor for 3 days.

The check-in is complete chaos. I expected it to already be low season here, but the harbor is like a beehive. It looks as if just about every charter boat has been rented out. The charter base in Lefkas, which is a subcontractor of our charter company in Athens and was booked through our agent in Germany, is completely overwhelmed. You would think they were doing this for the first time.

I love the Greeks, but now it also becomes clear why many expats are frustrated about various service-related issues: the Greeks invented philosophy, but some Greeks definitely did not invent work. Of course, there are also many very hardworking and reliable Greeks, and we have already met and appreciated many of them, more on that in the next blog post. But this time we also have to see the downside of the tourist business. And so things are promised that cannot be kept, people look for someone to blame, threats are made with the police, with ending the business relationship, every trick in the book is used. Never admit a mistake, under no circumstances ever give in. Everyone is enormously important, nobody is willing to decide anything. That is how I imagine the Greek civil service, but it seems to work pretty much the same way in the private sector.

So it is no surprise that our boat is not ready on Saturday. My question about the plan to solve the problem is met with a shrug. Mercifully, we are then still allowed onto the ship and do not have to book a hotel: of course they do not want to pay for that. The boat will then be taken into the harbor tomorrow and made ready there. That is especially annoying, because in the morning we actually want to set off with the sailing instructor, who also costs a lot of money in Greece.

The boat is in a dreadful state.

Sofia, our sailing instructor, is also Greek, but she is on the ball. With her there is no vague talk, everything has to be right. She would definitely make a good naval officer.

She has drawn up a tightly scheduled 3-day plan, and since we can only leave around midday because of the charter company, we are already far behind Sofia’s timetable. Neither we nor the elderly boat can keep up with the pace. On the morning of the second day I have to tell her firmly that she needs to shift down a few gears and be more patient with us. This is not about proving that she can sail, there is no doubt about that, she is the most competent 22-year-old this side of the Alps. The goal is for Alexandra and me to be able to berth and cast off the boat together without a nervous breakdown. By the end of the 3 days, we have reached 75% of that goal: out of 4 berthing maneuvers, only one ends in a nervous breakdown. We count that as a success, but there is still room for improvement.

The final berthing maneuver back at the charter base pier in Lefkas turns out to be difficult. After 3 days we are mentally and physically drained. The harbor is almost empty: on our side of the pier there is not a single other boat, which interestingly makes berthing harder, because it requires more precise maneuvering than when you can “simply” tie up alongside another boat.

Opposite the pier, an older group of gentlemen are passing around a bottle of whisky and getting louder and louder as they amuse themselves over Alexandra’s attempts to hit the pier at the right angle. Sofia dresses them down so thoroughly that everyone snaps to attention and does not say another word for a few minutes. There is still something to learn there. But Alexandra is completely done in and, to make matters worse, also gets the mooring line into the propeller. I am convinced she never wants to step onto a sailing boat again.

For now we will stay here and not move at all tomorrow, not just because we are all completely exhausted: the idiots at the charter base managed to rig the mainsail incorrectly. Fortunately we had Sofia with us, we hoisted the sails once along the way and she had an emergency fix ready for the problem. But now it has to be put right properly first. In principle it is actually a small job for a specialist, but it absolutely has to be done by a professional, because it is safety-critical. We are also organizing a diver to cut the mooring line free. None of us wants to dive here, because the charter boats probably all do not have greywater tanks, which means: anyone without a greywater tank shits directly into the harbor here, even though that is of course banned in the EU.

Well, we are slowly getting used to the routine: deny, brush it off, make false promises, look for someone to blame, threaten. By now I refuse to speak with the charter gofer; everything is now escalated through our agent in Germany, who then calls Athens and they instruct the person in charge at the base. JoJo, as always, reacts in a superhumanly calm and professional way. In fact, various employees of the charter company then show up unannounced, walk onto the boat without even saying hello, ask Alex for spare parts that are supposed to be on the boat, and in a chaotic and rather dangerous-looking action, sort out the sail. We are actually facing the wrong way in the wind for that, but doing it correctly does not seem to be an option. It looked as if they had no idea what they were doing. A long-distance sailor whom Alex met while walking the dog and who has spent his entire life on sailing boats then helps us check the work they did. Of course they did it wrong again: this way it is not possible to hoist the mainsail all the way up. Dave just shakes his head and says: That’s a safety issue. I see it that way too. So it is back to calling Germany again. And that is how it goes for 3.5 days, I cannot even write everything we have already experienced with them here. Dealing with all of this will then be a job for our legal expenses insurance, for now we first need to take care of ourselves. Any further chartering after the bookings we have already made is definitely over for us.

In the next blog post I will tell you whether and how we may have bought a yacht. Our first week is not even over yet. An intense life that has absolutely nothing to do with a vacation.

*This blog post has been automatically translated by a Large Language Model.