Where to Live While Cat Shopping

[monte]

Hi G. Yes Croatia became schengen this year As far as I know. That may have changed so it's worth checking for yourself. It is a real pain in the ass if you want to spend extended periods in Europe. I'd look into Greece as I've heard visas are nor so difficult to get there. Once you have a visa for any schengen country the others are very unlikely to cause any hassles regarding length of stay so you could chose whatever countries you want to spend your time in. You wouldn't even need to go to Greece unless part of the visa application needs to be finalised there.

[rabbi]

Winter is shitty in Greece. Its very rainy and can get cold. Many smaller coastal towns or islands are ghost towns. Not much to see for the family. you will have a hard time getting to other locations from there as many airports are either shut down or operate just very few connections in winter. Most connections to Greece run from where where the tourists live (uk, germany, netherlands, etc) but very few to other holiday destinatinons. So its hard to get from Greece to the Balearics for example.

If you just want to shop around it may be more feasible to base yourself somewhere where you can fly easily and cheaply to the different locations in the Med.
The UK for example is a few hours away from the Med but has lots of budget airlines like Ryanair or Easyjet. Cheaper to fly from London to Greece than some national flight within greece. I'd prefer that over greece anytime.
Or plan for something like a week in france, a week in spain, a week in greece, etc.


Greece has many ex-charter boats and quite a few owner boats there have been sitting unused in the yards for years. Same is true for croatia as far as I have seen.
I have seen more owner boats for sale in Spain and especially France.

Owner boats in most european countries must have VAT paid status to be used by the owner if he is EU citizens. So many true owner boats have VAT paid status. Theoretically this adds another 18-25% to the price for you, but in reality its much less.
In the deep south like greece and italy folks are very creative to get around this, like registering on a US company and such. But in many cases its still illegal, even if authorities are blind or corrupt.

If you want to sell in the Med after your trip you may see that selling to private buyers is easier if your boat has VAT paid status. So the amount of VAT is not necessarily lost and a boat with VAT paid status will make life easier for you (no temporary importation, no problem at customs visits, etc).

[DtM]

Purely from a great place to stay and plenty of catamarans available I would go to southern France.


I don't have Schengen issues so that helps me make that decision.

[markpierce]

Same place as when mono-hull or tri-hull hunting.

[zeve1]

Croatia became a EU member recently, but not in Schengen rules/visa yet..
Lot of good marinas. Not so many private cats like in Greece or Turkey, but still worth checking+it's not impossible to fly to bigger resorts in Greece and Turkey, although the flights during the wintertime could be a problem due to a low season. I suppose you would like to live somewhere along the coastline. Split and Zadar would be good choices, but I wouldn't like to skip mentioning Rijeka as well - not nearly touristic city like the rest of the places along the coastline with great options for finding a nice long term accommodation at the lowest prices. Safety is on the highest level there...people are pleasant..
Plus Venice airport two and half hours plus Zagreb (capital of Croatia) airport only around hour and half from the Rijeka city center. There is also Rijeka airport, but mainly used for summer charter flights.
If anyone needs more info, feel free to ask..

[GordMay]

Greetings and welcome aboard the CF, zeve.

[admiralslater]

We are just leaving the South of France (Aix en Provence) the winter weather here is cool and clear, with the occasional warmish day lot's to do. We have spent 2-3 months there for the last 3 years.
It is located a half hour north of Marseilles, 5 hours from Barcelona and 2 hours from Nice. If Outremers are your thing the factory is close. Marseilles has an international airport and Paris is 3 hours by 300 Kph Train.
If you organize your viewing then you could go to wherever see a bunch of boats and come back.