May 2010 Heading north to Istanbul

After leaving Marmaris to carry on our journey north, we had light northerlies that we sailed to, or some degree of south wind, the new cruising chute going up and down up a lot. We set off at about 9.30am every day, when some wind got up and made 25 to 40 miles each day depending on wind strength and direction. People who got up early to avoid the north winds, motored all the way. Sometimes it pays to be an owl, not a lark.
Here's a brief overview of places we stopped for those who may follow on behind. Page numbers refer to 7th ed Rod Heikell pilot.


Bozuk Buku (p222) 36 33.9N 28 01.3E
Picked up a buoy just behind Jasmone (sister Rival 41) and a Rival  36.  Apparently we all just missed Aju (Rival 41) who had been here the night before. That would have been weird! Ate at the restaurant ashore, but he was a bit of a rip off merchant. Food average and overpriced, but company great.


Short stop in Simi (Greece).We stayed in Pethi where there are no port police to bother us. We walked over the hill to Simi harbour (25 mins) and found Fotini's shop, Nikos wines near the bridge (tel 6972845222). She is a lovely lady, good prices for beer wine and spirits, you can taste the wines, and she'll deliver you and your supplies back to the port.
Turkish wine is like poison and extremely expensive so we stocked up well with Greek supplies, plus yummy Greek yoghurt, blue cheese and bacon!

Knidos 36 41.01N 27 22.6E p203
Anchored in Buyuk Liman (p203). It took a couple of attempts for the anchor to hold but Ok in the end. Interesting ruins ashore, but frankly we couldn't be bothered to go and explore!

Altinkum, Didim marina. 37 20.25N 27 15.6N p154
Tried to blag a free night in the new marina as the EMYR fleet were there, but they wanted 46 euros. Marina nearly empty due to ridiculous prices! There's a nice protected anchorage just behind the marina that was perfectly adequate for us cheapskates. Carrefour nearby.

Port St Paul 37 39.1N 27 00.1E p 149
Very quiet place opposite Samos. Turkish coastguard patrols at sea and at 2am on shore with flash lights, looking for refugees attempting to cross the short gap to the EU.

Kusadasi marina 37 52.2N 27 14.9E p145
We stopped here only to visit Ephesus. Ignoring everyone's advice we took the dolmus to the lower entrance and walked up and down the site – it is not that big. We were told to take a taxi to the upper entrance and walk down as it is so huge. We were also told to go early to avoid the cruise ship coachloads, but you just cannot get there early enough. We arrived at 12.30pm just as they were all off for their long lunch. We almost had the place to ourselves. Took a picnic to avoid the tourist hussle eateries on site. 2 nights at 37 euros per night in the marina, plus the hefty entrance fee for Ephesus. We were uninspired, it's not that large, or an impressive site, the ruins are badly restored, and in our opinion there are better ruins to spend your money on. Kusadasi not as bad a tourist town as we expected it to be.

Kormen Adasi 38 01.8N 26 52.2E p143
Anchored here to find the hot springs, but they only just took the edge off the freezing sea water. Best spring inside the cave, but still chilly. Gulets tie back to the hot springs for a lunch stop.

Sarpdere Limani, Nergis liman. 38 10.3N 26 30.5E p138
Delightful, quiet and nothing ashore. Good holding in the south bay.

Egri Limani 38 32.4N 26 22.7E p123
Blowing old boots from the south. Good bolthole, but poor holding. Fishermen directed us to a mooring buoy. No charge. Bleak.

Eskifoca 38 40. 2N 26 44.9 E p112
Considerably changed since 7th edition of pilot. New trawler harbour in SW of Buyukdeniz Liman. Little room to anchor and very deep. 35 TL on the quay using your own anchor, no facilities – stuff that! We found a good spot off Kucuklimani in 6m on sand. Good holding and near the main focus of activity.   Sloppy when the wind came strong from SW. We really liked this Turkish holiday town, and traditional fishing port. Has an interesting collection of old Greek houses from before the 1922 population 'exchange' now being done up and abused by Turks with no clue about architecture.

Bademli Limani 39 01.0N 26 47.9E p105
In search of more hot springs and protection from south winds. Springs minimal, green and stagnant. Not recommended. Rubbish lines the shore, and the hotels appear deserted, other than that it could be the Caribbean.

Ayvalik (39 19.3N 26 37.9E) p99, Camlik Koyu – landlocked bay within a landlocked bay for those troublesome forecasts.  We found over 10 cruising boats holed up here. Go ashore on the north of the bay and take the dolmus to town (1.50TL, every 5 mins). Lovely town, good shopping.

Babakale (39 28.9N, 26 03.9E) p94
New quay built, still open to SE though. It blew from SE of course. Charge 20 TL for no facilities, boring town.

Anit Limani 40 02.6N 26 12.1E, p49
Entrance to the Dardanelles and south tip of Gallipoli peninsular.
Good holding, went ashore for the Turkish and French cemeteries.

Canakkale 40 09.3N 26 24.4E, p50
We anchored off the harbour, just opposite a tiny yacht club. When we went to get fuel in the morning they asked why no-one came into the marina. Errr.. cos it's 50-75TL per night with basic facilities and the anchorage outside is fine. Lovely university town though, very nice people.

Kemer, 40 25.3N 27 04E, Sea of Marmara p53.
Full of trawlers and in NW to SW swell rolls in. We didn't stay.

Aksaz, 40 26.6N 27 10.3, Sea of Marmara p53.
Very shallow narrow entrance(1 boat width). We couldn't enter, lots of rocks awash between harbour and adjacent beach. We anchored in the lee of the large harbour wall by the steel works but were asked to move on by the officials. After negotiation they let us stay til 6am by which time the boat was covered in black grit.

Avsa Adasi, new port north of Turkeli. 40 32.2 N 27 30.6 E
Post apocalyptic, unfinished but old port. You can anchor right in the middle or go alongside. Nothing ashore, not pretty and very strange.

Avsa Adasi,  Yigitler 40 29.87N 27 31.6E 

Nice town with new harbour. We anchored off the beach for better swimming, but lots of jelly fish. Dia supermarket ashore – cheapest supplies in Turkey so far and straight into the dinghy from the quay. Nice little Turkish holiday town, not a lot happening though. Strange it being only 60 miles across the water from a city of 16 million.

Bays on north coast of Kapidag Yarimadasi. 

Stayed in calm weather in a couple of bays not in pilot book. Not much happening ashore (end of May) and lots of jellyfish. 

Mimar Sinan 41 01.0N 28 33.9N p84

Harbour tucked into the NW corner of Buyukcekmece. Free stay for 6-10 days if you can find a space. Metrobus/tram to Istanbul.

Also good anchorage off Buyukcekmece beach. Yildiz restaurant good value and good food. 

Now for some blog from Stuart, now there's a treat!

We are still in Istanbul. We have been here over a week and will stay a couple more dasys until weather is in our favour for the Bosphoros and into the Black sea. We arrived in a large bay to the west of Istanbul and anchored with a disturbing amount of smoke issuing from the engine after a 6 hour run. I had used a fuel additive earlier that stated that the filters would need more regular changes as it did it's job and had commented to Steph that I felt a change was imminent a few days earlier. So I changed the primary filter and gave the engine a run. Less smoke than the day before but still enough to attract a passing yacht who questioned if we had problems and why were we not in the small harbour. We were welcome. His offer of a free night was generous so we took him up the next day. A technical man offered assistance to remove the injectors and service them but we held out for time to consider options. Turks purporting to be engineers are common. Some even have some spanners. The more experienced will probably be able to diagnose your problem without setting foot anywhere near your boat. The problem will most likely be the one they repaired on the last engine they had a go at, which resulted in a good charge. Enquiries about cost of said repair will be met with "don't worry cost little, me very economic." The resulting charge will in deed be calculated on a small percentage of their estimation of your net worth, and bear no relation to the job performed which may of course in turn be nothing to do with your original problem. So if you can do it yourself, it's usually for the best.

After visiting the office in the port we were told we can stay for free for 6 to 10 days, for free, so we had time to visit Istanbul and consider the engine. The trip in to Istanbul seemed a little complicated and long winded but we thought we would give it a go as staying anywhere closer meant 60 + Euros a night.  The trip in from here starts with the Metro company bus, a reasonably direct motorway route into the outskirts Yeni Bosna, approx 45 mins,  cost 2.5 TL,  then a change to a train (1.50 TL) which links up with a Tram (1.50 TL)  route into the tourist sites of the city. Total travel time including changes 1 hour 30 mins, at best,  and 1 hour 45 mins at it's worst, depending on which site in Istanbul you are heading for. The transport system is excelent and at no time have we waited more than 5 minutes for a connection, even very late.  The benefit of free accomodation is that we have had time to visit the city at leisure, wandering miles around the back streets reaching parts that other tourists don't reach. One highlight was the discovery of a little workshop on top of a crumbling city wall with spectacular views over the Bosphorous, making knicker elastic on clattering belt driven machines that looked nearly as old as the wall that the near derelict workshop had been built on top of many years before building rules or regulations. Somehow I expected this type of industry to have completely vanished from a city of 15 million people and all gone to China but surprisingly it exists despite what would seem un-sustainable economic pressure.

The view from the knicker elastic 'factory'

Of course we visited the Palaces and Blue Mosque, Aya Sofia but the fun to me is the backstreets with their bewildering volume of the same shops. I will explain. In Turkey there is an long established culture of copying. Anything can be made and sold cheaper (especially if you have no idea why an item is made in a way or with parts that make it expensive.) So whereever somebody establishes a business that seems successful, no matter how local or small the market, somebody will copy your recipe and open the same shop next door. This evidence of a successful concept will attract more of the same and soon you will have a row, if not a street, of businesses all doing the same thing. Take for instance the delightful existance of shoe cleaners, not in my experience a service which you go out of your way to locate but a convenience if you have time and are passing one and your shoes are letting down your overall appearance. The obvious stratergy for this business would be to have one therefore at every busy pedestrian intersection or meeting point, But that's not the case here. You can cover miles of streets without the sight of a single shoe cleaner and then turn the corner to find not one, but 7 or 10, all competing for the same customer. Yesterday I passed a shop selling exclusively polysterene ceiling roses and architrave. Thats all it did, I've never seen another in Turkey and it can't be a big market here, however right next door someone had opened a different shop selling, you guessed it, exclusively, Polysterene ceiling roses and architrave.  This practice has it's obvious advantages to the consumer, unless you want your shoes cleaned in the wrong part of town.

So how is the engine? We found a Mercedes service center on the bus route so it was no problem to jump off, call into the parts manager, drink Cay (tea), discuss our requirement for additional filters and return in 4 hours time to collect them. Probably at a lower price than I could have bought copies. Also some advice and chemical to add to the fuel to clean the injectors in situ.  Worth a try. Well 2 hour run in the bay seems to have dome the trick with the exhust looking about normal so we will proceed without surgery and see how it goes. When we first arrived at the Mercedes center, the guard asked us what was our business so I showed some parts and said alisveris (Turkish for shopping), he directed us to the showroom to view a selection of 300,000 euro cars. After this slight misunderstanding we found the parts department!

The locals here have been very friendly. This is a sort of cooperative marina of sorts with a security gate and 24 hour security. The guard comes past quite often to see we are OK. The local boat owners or minders, are on hand to practice their English or lend a hand. The first evening they took us to negotiate with a local restaurant to ensure we got local rates but were incensed by the attitude that all forigners should be charged more than the locals would be prepared to pay, so they removed us from the restaurant and accompanied us to the fish and vege shops, selected the best food, we paid, and then returned us to the boats where they proceeded to light a BBQ prepare, cook and serve us with a meal much better than what we would have got in the restaurant. We had a great evening answering the questions and getting the family backgrounds of all the locals. Since then we have had visitors every evening we have been on board. They arrive with their own beer and spares and are a great entertainment. We provided a windsurfing lesson for one which proved considerable entertainment for the whole marina, they were still laughing about it that evening over a few beers, snacks and a boat tour of the town shoreline to view the bars and restaurants from the sea.

We will be sorry to leave but are assured of similar experiences on our next ports along the Black Sea.

Aya Sofia church, a mere shell of it's former glory in Byzantine days

Blue Mosque, an Islamic attempt to keep up with the Jones's

At Dolmabache palace, Steph tries to decide if these tiles would look good in the galley 

Nearly in Istanbul

Just a very quick update. We are anchored in a large bay on the outskirts of
Istanbul, having had a very enjoyable sail/motor north in pleasantly
English-summer-like weather.
The lat/long of our bay is 41 01.3N 28 34.7E if you want to look on Google
Earth. It is Friday night, and there is lots going on in this large beach
resort, just what we need after the almost post-apocalyptic solitude of the
Sea of Marmara islands.
Hope to visit Istanbul in the next few days.
More details later...

Spring wildlife - but what?

Can you identify the wildlife that we saw during our first few weeks afloat?
We saw 3 whales swimming slowly along the coast near Gemiler Adasi. These are the small ones – there was a huge one further out to sea. What are they?

In Bayandir Limani near Kas we saw loads of these tiny animal things in the water glowing bright blue like LED's. Slowly they were coming together in pairs (or threes – wey hey) and they were definitely glowing, not reflecting the light. They had lots of tiny wavy arms/legs along one edge. What are they?

Needing no explanation, but just as wonderful, we had dolphins (or are they porpoises?) jumping along next to our dinghy as we went ashore from the pine forested anchorage opposite Ece marina in Fethiye bay. 

In our walks ashore, particularly around the Lykian sites we've seen 3 snakes (one as big as my arm and definitely on my trajectory had I not stopped to look at something), tortoises, terrapins and turtles, and heaps and heaps of giant insects. It must be spring or something......

2 sea birds on a raft - aahh!!

And much more rare – look, what's this blue flappy thing?......

Finike to Marmaris

Escape from Camp Finike, April 2010

With the last day of our five-month contract rapidly approaching we fitted in the last few boat jobs and farewell parties around our timetable and untied from the marina bound for Kekova, only 15 miles away. As we sailed into the bay the water was turning white as the wind increased to 30 knots against us, just as we dropped anchor into the sticky gloop of Uc Agiz bay. If we'd left just one hour later it would have been a real hard slog. As the winds reversed into katabatic winds from all angles overnight, sending the anchor alarm on the GPS into a frenzy every hour, and then blew again at 40 knots the next day, it still felt really great to be swinging to our own anchor once more, particularly as we only managed 3 nights at anchor last year, due to taking part in the East Med Rally and being in a part of the world where there are no lovely bays to swing to your own hook.

We chilled out for a week enjoying the company of several yachts as they came from Finike and left again. We enjoyed
delightful walking on the Lykian paths around the bay and dinner in the newly discovered Kekova restaurant, half the price and twice as good as Ibrahims or Hasans. We were treated to a visit from the local mayor and the Turkish Minster of Tourism as they visited the tiny sleepy village to open the new visitors pontoon. The day before the visit announcements were made in the traditional manner from the village minaret speaker system to let all the locals know that the time had come to vacate the new visitors' pontoon because it is for .....visitors! So all the gulets tied up in a tidy line on the old locals pontoon, and the little fishing boats tied to any rocks they could find around the bay. Predictably within 1 hour of the ribbon cutting ceremony and departure of the officials the boats starting moving back in again. By the following day there were 20 gulets enjoying the new luxury visitors' pontoon. We asked around but no-one seemed to know who's job it would be to collect the dues for visiting yachts on the new pontoon, as there is no harbour master there. No doubt it is full by now!

It was time to move on again before any more Finike yachts came in to socialise with. With our visas due at the end of the month we decided to renew them early by anchoring in the bay near Kas (Bayindir Limani) and taking Captain Selos' boat to the Greek Island of Kastellorizo, and stock up on bacon, pork chops, spirits and Greek cheese.  We have been really fortunate to have settled, warm and sunny, calm weather for April, and it was no problem to leave the boat for a day to complete the visa formalities.
I have never been to Kastellorizon without there being some calamity on the ferry boat, and this was no exception. On leaving the harbour the new driver cut his engines to avoid a diver on the bottom with a free flowing regulator (he could have been coming up in an emergency). The boat drifted off course and swung around taking out the bowsprit of local gulet as it accelerated to get back on course. A lot of red faces all round!

A chance conversation with Birte from Circe informed us of an interesting bay just to the west and outside Kalkan, so this was our next stop. After anchoring for the evening , we took the little path behind the ruins of a house, and followed the piles of stones marking a tiny path up through the undergrowth. After a slightly breathless 30 minute scramble we emerged onto a ridge and there were the remains of an early Roman aqueduct system that crosses a dip between 2 hills. To enable water to flow across the dip, the central pipe of the aqueduct is a sealed siphon system. Each block weighs around 800kg and has interlocking rings. Some blocks were engineered so that they could be slid out for maintenance and the lowest blocks had inspection holes, presumably for removing sediment from the lowest point. The mind boggles how they brought the blocks here and how and where they were constructed. These aqueducts went on for miles and miles, although now only a few sections remain, bringing fresh water from the hills to the Lykian city of Patara - more of which follows.

Next stop the lovely sticky mud of Fethiye bay. This town really interests us, and although it has a touristy facade it has a lot to offer and our visit this time only whetted our appetite for more. With Martin and Gerlinda (Mojo) we hired a car to go and visit some of the old Lykian cities around the Xanthos valley, first Patara, which by 11am still only had 10 tourists on the site. The city was the port from which St Paul left Anatolia bound for Rome, and was a really important trading post in it's day for the Lykians, the navy of Alexander's successors and then the Roman Empire, and later the birthplace of St Nicholas, who still is seen in the night sky with his reindeer delivering parcels. 

It lies a few kilometres inland now, and a lot of the ancient city is believed to lie under the sand dunes. Just a couple of years ago they took out many trucks of sand and discovered the old lighthouse, now marooned in the dunes. 

Using all the partial maps available to us between English and German tourist guides, we explored a back road and drove up into the Saklikent Gorge, where we stopped for a snack by the river. We were tempted into paying 4TL entry fee for the gorge, as we were told you could wade through the gentle stream up the gorge for about 3 km. The gushing flood from up the hill, across the road and through the car park should have raised our suspicions, but in we went through the turnstile, along the wooden ramps for about 200m, then we were confronted with a raging freezing torrent which would have been truly foolhardy to attempt to cross, as for sure we would have been carried away down the river towards where the white water rafting trips start from ! This is definitely a mid summer pastime – not to be attempted for a few months after the snow has melted on the surrounding mountains. 

With our canyoning explorations thwarted, we had time for another Lykian city, Tlos. Although these cities all date from around the same period, they were all built in stunning strategic sites, and are barely excavated, as there are so many sites and not enough archaeologists or money to do them justice. Each place has something a bit different to offer. Tlos is currently being farmed and goats are encouraged to graze the agora and stadium!

We totally underestimated how efficient our car would be on petrol, so we had to hire it for a second day to use up the remaining fuel!  We drove to the northernmost, highest of the ancient Lycian cities, Oeneanda, described as a vast, romantic jumble of tumbled masonry, lintels, statue columns, and buried arches overgrown with juniper, oak, and cedar...frequented only by  squirrels and the occasional hunter or shepherd, in wild mountain country. The directions were given exactly to 100m and we parked in front of the village tea shop where the gentlemen of the village were enjoying their Sunday morning game of Okey ( like rummy with scabble tiles). We had a cay (Turkish tea) and within moments had attracted the interest of the village guide who insisted on accompanying us and showing us around. Although we tried to dissuade him, we would not have found all the interesting  ruins without him, so it was worthwhile having him along, even though he spoke no English. This ridge-top site overlooking both sides of the huge valley is virtually untouched by the excavations of the German Institute. The pillars and blocks lie scattered among the rocks and shrubs, and pieces of pottery are everywhere. Diogenes of Oenoanda was a prolific writer and possibly purchased an entire piazza in the 2C Ad to inscribe his lengthy discourses on ethics, physics, dreams, old age, the Gods, origin of humans, and the invention of clothing, speech and writing. The pillars with fragments of his inscriptions lie scattered by 2000 years of weather and earthquakes around the hill top. It was originally about 25 000 words long and filled 260 square meters of wall space.

We ate our picnic at the top of the theatre with views of the top of the world all around us, before acknowledging that we couldn't stay forever, and would have to return to the village, the car, Fethiye and the modern world. 

Onward from Fethiye via Skopea Limani, Gemiler Adasi and Ekincik to Marmaris to see our friends Kate and Davey. Whilst at anchor here I decided to inspect the chainplates, as neither of us could ignore the small bulge on the deck any longer, and feel comfortable about bashing into the Black Sea or meltemi waves. After taking a saw to the  headlining and wood lining of the interior of the hull, our suspicions were confirmed that the chainplate had partially sprung away from the original fibreglass and the plate had slightly bent. It's a task that is much better tackled in Marmaris, centre of the yachting industry, where you can get anything done, and there are lots of contacts, and competitive pricing as opposed to Finike's tiresome monopolies. 

As Stu got to work with the fibreglassing, rebedding the chainplate, and making a lined access hatch for future access, our fellow voyagers to the Black Sea are getting further ahead of us, although some of them are stuck waiting out an early northerly blow in the Aegean. In between grinding, cleaning and glassing we visited Yat Marin for the first time – what an amazing operation – it has to be seen to be believed, they really know how to get a lot of boats launched. We were more impressed than we expected and while we wouldn't want to spend a winter there, we'd have no qualms about hauling out there to do work on Matador in the future. 

Our friends Kate and Davey helped to deliver a charter yacht from Marmaris to Finike and it was just perfect timing for them to help us by bringing our cruising shute back to us as it arrived in Finike later than expected. Hopefully with the right sort of wind it might help us catch up.

The weather here is 22 to 25 degrees and sunny most days, with light winds. April has been an excellent month for escaping from the rigours of marina life, even if we have had a small setback. 

And here's the forecast for the next 5 days :

http://www.wunderground.com/global/stations/17298.html 

Good init?

PS:

There are some late additions to the blog for Syria, Lebanon and Israel, if you don't mind scrolling back a few pages. 

Finike, Turkey Winter 2009-2010

Storms, animal rescues and camel wrestling

Since arriving back in Finike, via southern Cyprus, for our second winter season on 7th November, life has been a constant whirl of social activity. We know that you think we are sipping cocktails in the cockpit every afternoon but in reality we have so much to do that we rarely sit still for any time at all. The winter timetable was in full swing when we arrived, and we'd already been nominated in absentia for several responsibilities. Not a problem at all, as this is what makes for a fascinating community spirit. Small English villages could learn a lot from this, bringing like-minded people together in a low-cost social gathering, using only a small communal room, keeping everyone's spirits up throughout the winter gloom. In Finike one can partake, or avoid, as you wish, the following :
Keep fit, yoga, pilates, film night, art class, french lesson, quiz night, turkish class, games night (cards, backgammon etc), coffee morning, music club, topic night (with a wide range of topics to learn about), local walks, badminton, volleyball, concert trips, weekly BBQ's and boule. Phew, this is why we get so few boat jobs done in between.

We arrived in Turkey just before the four day festival of Bayram Kurbani, the muslim festival of sacrifice. Every family sacrifices a goat or sheep in commemoration of the ram sacrificed by Abraham in place of his son, a proportion of the meat being distributed to the poor. For weeks before there were many markets filled with nervous goats and sheep – just like our turkey farms before Christmas, but much more public, often by the roadside. Apparently A&E departments are full of people injured during the amateur slaughtering in the household. Can you imagine how many vegetarian families there would be in England if you had to do in your own turkey in the garden?

Turkey is a muslim country so it is a welcome respite from Christmas decorations and Jingle Bells and it is a normal working day. So Christmas was another opportunity for community events to be organised by the marina dwellers and shore-based ex-pats. We had an international Christmas eve carol concert (most Europeans celebrate 24th rather than 25th), arranged for a Turkish family to be taught to cook christmas dinner for 40 at a Turkish restaurant, a boxing day treasure hunt, christmas and New Year's party. Steph's mum came out to join us for 2 weeks over Christmas and entered fully into the spirit of it all, even playing the electric organ for the carol service.

We were invited to Jo and Graham's apartment in Finike for a sumptuous feast on Christmas day. They were really generous hosts and great cooks. We had a really superb day of total gluttony.

Like the whole of northern Europe, it has been a particularly bad winter here. The storms have been more numerous and severe than previous years. Locals tell us that 5 years ago it would be unusual to have more than 10 days rain in the whole winter. Parts of the Turkish coast (Olympos, Adrasan) had already washed away before we even arrived. A December storm undermined much of the promenade and decimated the orange harvest. The steep streets of Finike were like gushing torrents. Now we know why the kerbs are a foot high.
During one storm we unexpectedly had a sustained hurricane force gust for about 30 minutes. 7 genoas were unfurled around the marina, and several shredded before anyone could get to them. One of these was on a large gulet, chocked up on the hard-standing in the yard. The marineros were swiftly on the case to lower the flogging sail before it destabilised the gulet from it's supports which would have caused a devastating domino effect on other yachts around the yard.
In this same storm we experienced a hailstone storm of biblical proportions. We really feared for our perspex hatches and solar panels and the noise was deafening. All around the clear windows of sprayhoods were shredded by high velocity frozen golf balls. A couple of days later we hired a car, which was nearly new, but had a totally dimpled roof and bonnet from the force of the hail.

We've had a few days when the easterly winds have caused a swell to reflect off the beach into the marina, causing the yachts to dance around on their lines and roll a fair bit, but we never felt in any danger or real discomfort – we just remember how bad our experience was in Vibo Marina, Southern Italy, where I was unable to get off the yacht at all during the storms. We are very happy that we weren't tempted to take advantage of cheaper mooring fees and go to the new Alanya marina. The intrepid cruisers who spent the winter there suffered from storm surges, pontoons breaking up and cleats tearing apart – amongst many other calamities on their building site marina. When we were there in May during the rally we observed a small but annoying swell or surge even in normal winds and thought it must be uncomfortable for the winter. We never thought that this new marina would be breaking up! If anyone is thinking of going there, make sure you look at the pictures in the liveaboard magazine before you pay any money!! The cruisers that spent the winter there enjoyed a really pioneering spirit with a lot of parties, so it wasn't all bad.

One consequence of the storm was that masses of timber, fruit and rubbish were washed down the mountains and rivers, then pumped back into the marina by the enormous swells. It did appear that you could walk across the marina, and greatly confused the local marina dogs. We fished out three very exhausted doggies one after the other (don't they talk to each other ?), and then Stuart rescued a baby turtle who couldn't come to the surface for all the flotsam. It took a week for the marina staff to pile the detritus high on the quay, using just pitchforks. They were very happy to have the firewood apparently, and didn't seem to mind the hard work.

In February a bus trip took us to Demre about 20 miles away (home of the church of St Nicholas, see last winter's blog) for a day of camel wrestling. Yes, that is what I said. Camels were used until relatively recently before the main coastal route was linked to the villages, as they were needed for carrying supplies over the rough terrain. Now they are kept solely for wrestling, and travel all over Turkey to partake in this strange ritual, dressed up to the nines in their finest colourful scarves, blankets and trinkets.

A female camel is first paraded up and down to get the males 'going', and they are then all fired up for fighting with other males for the right to mate – which unfortunately for them they don't seem to have the opportunity to do! The camels lock feet and necks and try to bring their opponent to the ground. They foam at the mouth in a revolting manner, inflate their tongues and quite often try to get off their leashes and make a run for it through the crowds, flinging camel spit through the air.

The crowd were protected from the camels by a single piece of flimsy plastic tape, which of course the camels  completely trashed within seconds of the start.

It was a fascinating insight into this local event. The men sat in men's trucks, and the women and children in others. Camel sausages were on sale (a reminder to the contestants of why they might want to take the opportunity to scarper!) as well as whole chickens on a donor kebab spit.




The weather has turned lovely and springlike again now, and our local walks have recommenced. The beautiful spring flowers are already out, and the sea is sparkly blue under a cloudless sky.

Our sea swimming persisted until just into the New Year year, and we have already dipped our feet in to test the water again after the storms. This is when are very happy to be in the Med. No matter how severe the weather, the winters are mercifully short, with plenty of pleasant days in between.
We have less than four weeks to go until the end of our contract here, then we are making an early break to get around the Turkish coast and north as soon as possible to Istanbul, through the Bosphorous and into the Black Sea before the northerly strong meltemi winds start to blow. We are really looking forward to swinging to our own anchor again in numerous bays, after our busy year in ports and marinas of the eastern Med last year, which I will be writing more about in the weeks to come....

Key to photos: shopping for goats for Bayram Kurban; Christmas carols; Jo and Graham host Christmas dindins; hail on the pontoon; rescued turtle;  flotsam; camel wrestling; Karen and Sheila swimming on New Years Day.

Farewell to the Middle East

It's finally happened, the new mainsail looks great and is ready for a serious test. The new bimini, with front back and sides, is complete and tested and we're looking forward to having an extra living room in the winter. We have completed our travels in Jordan to the stone carved ancient city of Petra and slept in a Bedouin camp on a sand dune in Wadi Rum, and completed our diving courses in the Sinai peninsula of Egypt in the Red Sea. It's been a big year with a lot of travels and experiences, costs and memories. Promise to write about it all during the winter when we are marina bound in Finike again, in between social activities with many old and hopefully new friends too. Looking forward to the lovely smiley Turkish people. 

We've practiced untying from the marina 3 times now - to get fuel from the fuel berth, to scrub the bottom of the boat outside the marina, and to test the new sail. We're confident we can do it again tomorrow morning. We should be in Cyprus by Tuesday evening, watching the weather for the next leg to Finike.