Although we understand that Mariadz is VAT paid in Malta and hence officially an EU boat, as a British registered boat we like to leave the EU every eighteen months to “reset the VAT clock”. This stops an EU country charging you VAT on your boat as a permanent import and the boat only has to leave EU waters for a day to be reset. This was a problem for people during Covid, since they couldn’t move their boats or get crew to help due to lockdown we know of a few boats in Spain that were caught out and the owner had to pay VAT on the perceived value of their boats.

On mariadz, as readers will know, we like to be squeaky clean so even despite our Maltese VAT certificate we still leave the EU every year.

So we decided to try and do this at the end of the summer of 2024. We have a perfect weather window and we are thinking of spending a week to get to Montenegro, an overnight run, followed by going up the coast to Croatia as we did the previous year and island hoping at some of our favourite places. An admirable plan, in which we planned to work during the week but have fun in the evenings and weekends.

Brindisi, in common with some other Adriatic ports, has a real problem with growth on the boats when they are stationary and generally there are people around who will don scuba gear and armed with a scraper clean the bottom of the boat for you. This helps immeasurably with hull speed through the water and is a requirement in Brindisi whenever the boat is left for a few months,

This time, Maria asked our pontoon friend Mukbil if he would do it. Mukbil is an incredibly friendly Turkish guy who helped us to move our berth after the marina put huge boats either side and across the water so it was impossible for us to negotiate the cats cradle of lazy lines from people’s boats to get into our berth. This came to a head during the summer when we had four attempts to get into our berth and kept fouling on different lines. This sounds quite amateurish to be honest but we had never had a problem before but cutting out the turning space for us meant we could not go in straight and the large motor boat next to us had their line taught so that it came pretty much to the middle of the channel and met the lines on the other side. To add insult to injury, as the marina pulled us off the lines where we were stuck, they used a black workboat which left huge black marks all over the side of the boat. Not difficult to get out with some elbow grease but frustrating all the same. Anyway, enough was enough and we demanded to be moved to a pontoon where we could get in with ease i.e the other side of the pontoon we were on. After a long time and constant nagging of the marina, Mukbil reached out to us and told us that the boat opposite him was leaving and we were in there quickly. So we have moved to P pontoon and our friend Mukbil has been brilliant.

Anyway, I digress. Mukbil agreed to go under our boat and clean it off so we could go and by the time we arrived at the boat, her undersides were looking clean.

We have got our provisions and are ready to go so we do our normal pre-flight checks, the engine is fine, everything is looking good to go.

Leaving the berth is flawless as usual…. More of that later…. And we are on our way. As we round the sea wall and fort to head to the outer harbour, we engage the autopilot that will see us through the journey so we are not too tired. Half way through the bay, we are veering off course and there is an alarm from the autopilot. I go down below to reset the systems hoping that will resolve the issue. We start again but it does it again and it gets much worse as we come out of the harbour when the entire navigation suite including depth, speed, autopilot and wind indicators stop working, the autopilot on its own we have dealt with before but not having the rest seems like a problem too far when we have sixteen to eighteen hour journey ahead of us, we reluctantly agree to turn back, see if we can get the problem fixed and let’s see if we can go in a couple of days.

We get back in and talk to one of the local guys who agrees to take a look for us. I won’t name names but I will describe what happened….

Firstly he is banging his way through our neat and orderly electrical system randomly cutting cable ties which didn’t make me 100% happy. He starts to look for the navigation controller. This is situated behind the raymarine chartplotter at our navigation table. In his eagerness to get to this he starts breaking the plastic covers around the chartplotter. What!!! He suggests that it will be ok when they go back because you will hardly see the crack! The chartplotter is out and he starts to pull wires from the navigation controller. I can only assume that he shorts something in there because there is a loud bang and he looks round quite worried whilst not admitting to anything. I’m beginning to lose patience as he single handedly sets about the boat. But he is finished for the moment after about 45 minutes of work saying the navigation controller has failed and we need a new one. His performance so far has not filled me with confidence but he says he will come back tomorrow with a view of how much it will cost to fix and how quickly it can be done. On these situations I go back to the team that I trust and for electronics work, Ollie at Seapower is my man. I call him and explain what has happened and he agrees it is likely to be the controller. Ollie can supply that for us but it will likely take some time but he agrees to give me an idea of cost including express shipping to Italy. Ollie never lets us down 😀

The next day dawns and we are still hopeful that the holiday can be back on. This is stopped in its tracks when our electrician comes back to us. He quotes us more than €2,500 to get the part and it may be here towards the end of the week. Bang, there goes our holiday, our spending money and anything else we had left. with that kind of timeline I would much rather give the work to Ollie and when I speak to him he confirms that the price given seems really high and in fact the system had been initially installed with a whole load of other work for less than that. Ollie has got a price for us which is hundreds less even including delivery and we order through him with a not dissimilar delivery timescale. However, we have had trouble with things being sent from the UK for us before so I am a little concerned whether we will get the part when we expect it. I shouldn’t have worried as the delivery is like clockwork and Ollie has even found a spare surround to replace the one that has been broken. Absolute hero and saved us money too.

So I have my new navigation controller in hand and decide that this is a like-for-like swap and do I really want a screwdriver waving madman anywhere near my boat again. How hard can it be…..

To be fair, the hardest part of the whole operation is actually unscrewing the old box from the inner wall and putting up the new one. It’s made harder because of the awkwardness of the space you are going into and the non-standard screw heads that took a bit of working out. However once in place, it is a simple task of plugging the old wires into the corresponding space in the new box. I now have a working navigation system again but this has all taken the full week we had allocated to being away.

We decide we will pop out of the harbour for the weekend, not least of all to make sure the new box is working as expected and invite our fantastic friends Carlo and Sabrina to come with us, the week may have been a wash out but at least we can spend some quality time with our friends. I think I have done the dockside configuration correctly but there may have been a problem so when I get to the outer harbour of Brindisi and switch over to the autopilot, it immediately goes the wrong way, oops! May need to do that again.

We are anchored outside of the harbour having a light lunch and a small drink while we chill and chat. At the end of a lovely afternoon, I decide to quickly do the configuration again whilst anchored and see if that works. It’s not exactly dockside but hopefully won’t be a problem, we start to head in and this time the autopilot behaves exactly as expected and I am quite chuffed with myself.

At least the boat is working and ready for our next trip whenever that will be.

The next day I speak to the local electrician, he doesn’t need to worry because I was able to get it installed and it works fine. Thanks for your efforts before and how much do I owe you? He asks for €250. I am perplexed. You were on the boat for 45 minutes, broke stuff and then gave me a ridiculous quote for a replacement. Apparently, he wanted to charge me for the fitting of the unit that I had done! needless to say, that wasn’t happening, and I pointed out that he had broken part of my chartplotter and on the internet that costs €30, another huge thanks for Ollie finding me one. We settle at a much lower number, neither of us happy which I guess is the sign of a good negotiation. He won’t be back on our boat though.