Living a Kaffka-esque drama

Michael, Megan's son, visited us on the boat recently, and got to spend an exciting 10 days with us, based in Lavrio (poor attempt at humour). He was reading 'The Castle' by Franz Kaffka. In this book, the protagonist, known only as 'K' stuggles to gain access to the mysterious authorities who rule the town, for unknown purposes.  Kaffka's writing introduced notions of bureaucracy, alienation, anomie and existential dread into common parlance.

This book seemed to be an eerie prognostication of our current predicament. If you've been following our story, you'll know that we've had a series of mishaps, that led us to seek remedy in mainland Greece. We spent several weeks in Sousaki, and now we are laid up in Lavrio, a major Greek port outside of Athens.

We were to have our engine repaired by Dave Hartley, a british mechanic we met down in Crete. Dave spent several days on our engine down in Sousaki, flushing out the gearbox (which had run for several days dry of lubrication) and replacing the drive plate. We tried the gearbox out on a trip to Agina and Epidavros, and it was still problematic. Dave eagerly announced that our gearbox was stuffed and we needed a new one.

We duly ordered a new one, and was told it would arrive in 2 days. Dave could replace it in a day, and by magic, everything would be right in the world and we could leave Greece as planned.

Well, 2 days turned into 10 days, the gearbox sat in Milan inexplicably for days. We took a trip to the Greek immigration authorities to enquire about a visa extension, as our Schengen visa was in danger of expiring. Well, call me 'K', our visit to the Castle had begun.

First, we were interrogated by several of the office staff, who finally announced that the only authority who could rule on our case would not be in the office until next Monday. We wait, we see the authority. More frantic Greek discussions. Next, a young body builder with a natty frontal bum-bag (cock-bag? , if you'll excuse the vernacular, it will have relevance later in the tale), asks me to jump on his bike, and we high-tail it to the port police. The port police tell him that the 'correct way' for us to remain in the country, is to have a marine surveyor certify that our boat is unseaworthy. The Australian Embassy would then be notified, and they would then have to certify that the boat was then repaired to Australian flagged standards. By the way, this procedure would cost us thousands of Euro's.

Next the immigration police ask us for a letter from our mechanic, certifying that the boat is detained due to mechanical failure. Our British mechanic writes such a letter, on his company letterhead. However, the immigration police can't accept this letter because there is no official tax number, nothing to prove that our mechanic is a mechanic. The plot thickens, days pass, our mechanic is worried about being pursued for tax fraud.

Finally, the immigration authorities come up with a solution. We must go to the Australian Embassy, and they will sign a statutory declaration that we will make, certifying that our boat is broken down (which is pretty easy to see, since it doesn't have a gearbox at the moment). So, our body-building, ripped jeans and muscle t-shirt immigration police office commandeers a police car (unmarked, broken down with lots of things not working) and drives us to Athens (about 1 hour journey each way). He drives the entire journey at 160 kph (the top speed of the little police car). We ask him about speeding, and he said that no-one bothered about it, including the police, as the courts were too busy to process any of the fines.

We checked into the Embassy, and we noticed that George (we were on first name terms now) had to open his little 'cock bag' (the previously mention front slung bum bag) and take out his Glock 9mm pistol and check it in with security before entering the Embassy. Yes, even the immigration officers (who are also gun-toting police) carry arms, and our gonad-fuelled body builder was packing real heat down there!

Finally, we pay the Embassy, we pay the immigration police and 'Hey Presto', we are granted a 1 month visa extension.

We wait some more days, and the gear box that was promised to arrive in 2 days, finally appears after 10 days. However, in the meanwhile, our mechanic announces that he must return to England. He's going for 6 weeks for urgent medical treatment. I wish he'd told us that before we embarked on rebuilding the transmission. None of the work he was doing is finished, so he palms it out to a variety of unknown characters, including a new mechanic who speaks no English and is not available for another week or two! Mechanics are rare birds in the technological wasteland of Athens.

Getting desperate now, the gearbox finally arrives. Megan and I do all the research we can, and decide that we must do this ourselves. After a herculean 12 hours of labour, we get the gearbox into the boat. We start the engine, it runs!!. Huzzah, our worries are over. And then we notice a steady drip of ATF transmission fluid from the gearbox. We tighten the bottom drain plug, we replace the aluminium washer with a copper washer, all to no avail.

We had noticed that the packaging of the gearbox was oil-stained with light machine oil. It appears that the storage lubrication had leaked out from this drain plug. There was a manufacturing defect in the gearbox. Unbelievable angst!!

So, mustering again our courage, and wondering what the universe was trying to tell us????, we spend another day, pulling the gearbox out, and packaging it to return it to the UK. We had to buy another gearbox, as they would not ship out a replacement until they'd received the old box back, and that would exhaust our time in Greece.

So here we are, the clock is ticking. The new new gearbox is in transit somewhere, the immigration police are driving like maniacs packing heat in their sporrans, we have become practiced gearbox mechanics and soon to be Greek illegal refugees.

Life sure is interesting these days. Megan asked what I wanted for my immanent birthday. I said, 'to spend it in Turkey!'.