Conundrum : which Greek marina to go to as a base

[krissteyn]

Have not posted here for ages , hope info I need is out there ?

I am bringing my South African catamaran to Greece (from Cyprus) where we will be getting permanent residence status. The boat is VAT paid. We will be cruising from January - December 2013 around Greece and Croatia/Turkey. I have never been to the Med before and have no pre-conceived ideas.
The only requirements are a "safe" marina and relatively easy access to an airport.

Question : what area would be good and relatively in-expensive to use as a base. I will need to store the boat until January/February from approx. mid October.

Hopefully I can get some comments on suitable marinas from the resident experts ...

Kris
SV Footprints

 

[nimbusgb]

Central Ionian. Levkas, Corfu or Preveza.

Preveza for reasonably priced, out of the water storage.

A couple of days sail to Croatia, a bit more to Turkey

 

[nigelmercier]

Central Ionian. Levkas, Corfu or Preveza.

+1
I used to think that Levkas was hard to get to out of season, until I moved to the Aegean. One trip took 20 hours from LGW.

 

[Niall1975]

Hi
By far the best Marina in the Ionian is Gouvia in Corfu, all the services, great live aboard community, good friendly locals and all the services. Near the airport, ferries yadda yadda. Also a bit more expensive however. There are lots of other choices, but Lefkas, very quiet and a bit isolated, Preveza will be better once new marina is built but it won't be before you arrive. We looked at quite a few and decided to stay put for another year. Looked at Lefkas but for the sake of 2 days sailing we didnt see a huge benefit. I think even next year we will Summer in Croatia and return to Gouvia for the winter.

If you pay annually with the group you can use the groups other marina's free for a month so long as its pre arranged with the head office. When we go to Lefkas this usually involves us calling them an hour before we arrive.